Last week (or so…) there was an article in The New York Times magazine about the “plague of strong female characters.” “Tough, Cold, Terse, Taciturn and Prone to Not Saying Goodbye When They Hang Up the Phone,” was the title.

In it the author specifically references the character Natalie Portman plays in the recent romantic comedy “No Strings Attached”. The movie is about a girl (EMMA/Portman) who tries to do the “just hooking up” thing with a guy (ADAM, Ashton Kutcher) she ultimately realizes she loves. SPOILER ALERT: she fails.

I read the article and agreed with most of the point the author was trying to prove. Yes, there are a lot of female characters doing the cold, hard, and pissed-off routine. They seem to be independent and extremely guarded. They obviously don’t like to follow the status quo.

But her specific use of Natalie Portman’s character Emma raised a question that I’d raised but forgotten to post about when I first saw the movie.

See – I’m still not 100% sure about this, but I don’t think that I think Emma is a strong, female character. I realize she is the version of a strong, female character that the New York Times article was referencing; she is what Hollywood is calling a strong, female character today, and there are lots of examples of her out there. But I think that I actually perceive her as being pretty weak.

(As you can tell I’m still working through my thoughts on the issue, so bear with me as I use this blog post to do so.)

The movie – with my editorializing – goes something like this:

• Emma is a hard-working intern of the doctor variety who has little time for life
• Emma likes men very much, but does not have the time to really date one because she a. doesn’t have time and b. doesn’t like the idea of dating people. Case in point:

There’s an interesting evaluation of the story from the perspective of ADAM, but I made a pact early on in the development of this blog to never write post about Ashton Kutcher, so I can’t get into it.

Back to whether or not Emma is a strong, female character. Emma is definitely head-strong. She does what she wants. She is absolutely resilient in her medical profession. She tells it like it is in most circumstances. She bucks convention in many ways. She does not cry (until the end).

But I don’t think the choice she makes – the central choice of the movie, to avoid really dating Adam – is the choice of a strong, female character. I don’t think it’s the choice of a strong person, period. Feel free to pounce on this statement, but I think it is much easier to arrange a no strings attached relationship than it is to actually date someone. I also think it’s much easier to lie to yourself about how you feel about someone than it is to confront those feelings.

The way I see it, Emma starts the movie guarded and ends the movie strong. There is a significant difference between those two characteristics, and I think it’s one the author of the New York Times article misses a bit. A female character isn’t strong because she’s tough, cold or terse. She may be acting strong. She may believe she’s strong. But I think strength comes from maintaining your true sense of self while still being vulnerable enough to admit what the deepest parts of that true self want. Emma’s true self is an independent woman who’s never going to be a typical girly girlfriend. But Emma’s truer self wants to be with Adam. A truly strong, female character would find a way to be who she is yet have what she wants.

Emma stays as headstrong as she was in the beginning of the movie even after she confesses her love to Adam. And though our time ends when the credits roles, I believe she and Adam went on to a balanced relationship in which she does not compromise herself for old ideals of romance.

But there’s a difference between strong and strong-willed just like there’s a difference between strong and stubborn or strong and guarded. And – brace for soap box moment – I think it can be a little dangerous to woman (and men and humans of all kinds) when we confuse those definitions. We all aspire to be strong people and we all aspire to be Natalie Portman…

…so it would appear that the moral of this entire post is that we must play very close attention to when Natalie Portman is and is not playing a legitimately strong person. (Note: Black Swan = NOT).