Sally Acorn: Why people hate her in SatAM

I'm making two articles focusing on why people don’t like Princess Sally. Part one, this article, will focus on why people can’t stand her SatAM version, the second article focusing on her Archie comic version will be posted later. I’m starting with SatAM first because Archie draws many parallels to the SatAM version of the character, which maintains what many people still hate about her. So without further ado...

SatAM

Attack of the strawman feminist

In order to understand the entire story one has to reflect on a little history. After all, Sally goes back almost 20 years. So let us begin the story.

Sally was one of those TV feminists from the 1990's who like many popular female media icons of her time encompassed a particular set of tropes: typically a token exceptionally overqualified at their job, compared to most of the cast, and misandrist, albeit not necessarily needing to be explicitly so. Remember Lola Bunny, Princess Jasmine, and Buffy? These characters were a part of media "girl power" movement going on in the 90's that didn't plague just the TV and film industry, but also the music industry as well--practically the whole entertainment industry. Popular American music groups like the Spice Girls, TLC and Destiny's child were rather prominent examples. This "girl power" movement came in response to a wave of feminist activism that had been around since the 70's and 80's which has socially been dubbed 2nd wave feminism. The entertainment industry cashed in on the feminist movement to make profits no matter how much they bastardized the actual "gender equality" concept of feminism. They simply created reverse sexism and called it feminism. What pisses a lot of people off about princess Sally was that the show itself tried to sell her off as feminism, and people who have no idea what feminism is ignorantly parade her as this "grrl power" character when she was nothing of the sort.

For example:

- Sally would infer there was a difference in terms of superiority between men and women. Occasionally she would sigh "boys" when the male cast did something reckless, as if men were more inferior minded to her and were simply unreasonable because of their gender and not just because that's simply how the personalities of some of the male characters operated. But it gets worse than that folks. Much worse.

- The creatives of SatAM go a step further by not giving Sally any "real" flaws at all! Not once if hardly ever is Sally's flaws actually detracting from her character in SatAM. She may have had potential flaws, but they the group never regarded them, so they never became such. Sally's "flaws" are not really admonished in the series. Occasionally she is wrong, but she was wrong but usually because she was cautious, which is a virtue needed in war, and therefore the gang would cut her some slack. If she screwed up on a mission, the group would always tell her she was just trying too hard to do everything. This may have been true, but there was no incentive by the writers to offer Sally circumstances that made her come to life as a flawed person like real people are. Even when she was flirting with Griff to make Sonic jealous--no one really admonished her for doing so.


The problem was that by creating this female character that was perfect in the eyes of her peers, it implied this expectation that real women could be perfect as well, despite the fact that none of the male characters in the show were ever expected to be such and weren't such. In actuality, this made Sally incredibly insulting as a character mythos.

- Sally was addressed in the show as the token voice for feminism in the SatAM show. She's practically the only female character who is naked like the boys are, while every other girl is clothed--albeit next to nothing (besides Dulcy, but she has a reptilian body). Since Sally is portrayed as the "perfect" character, she is placed on a higher pedestal than the other characters. So her contrasting decisions are implied to not just be simply reflective of her own preferences, they suddenly become "right".

-The problem with this is of course, is that it serves as false feminist advertising, as if to say, that conforming to masculinity is "right" and that will make you seem perfect in the eyes your peers, as Sally was to hers. To like traditionally feminine things would be "wrong", because Sally was portrayed as the most perfect character in the entire series. Because she was portrayed as "perfect" implies that her male conformity is "right".




Relationship Hoglet

One of the biggest complaints about Sally is that because she is the perfect foil (or opposite) for Sonic's personality, there is nothing the other characters can contribute to Sonic as a character that Sally cannot. To demonstrate, Sally is the only character who really chews Sonic out whenever he is being reckless. Recklessness is the manifestation of any flaw regardless how assertive or passive the flaw, because it requires lack of concern or forethought about the consequences of the flaw, which causes the flaw to manifest in the first place. Sally is a balance to this and compensates for all of Sonic's flaws because she's his perfect foil or opposite to his personality.



However, if Sally is the only one whose needed (as she can balance what his personality lacks). The other characters have no personality traits to foil. They have no aspects of their own personalities to use in completing Sonic's life. So Sonic in short has no need for who they are as persons, as their personalities cannot regularly offer anything to balance Sonic's that Sally can't. The whole premise to her relationship is to be the polar opposite. No matter how hard the show tries to portray Sonic and the freedom fighters as a group of close friends, or even a surrogate family, It is never genuine in actual practice. A bond must have substance to be a bond. If you have no reason to value someone highly, there's no basis for a bond to exist.

So in essence, the freedom fighters just become generic figures on the battlefield, only valued as appliances that help Sonic fight. His bonds with them aren't genuine which creates several plotholes in the story because Sonic does much to indicate the bond should have been formed. Ironically because the storyline is conveying that these characters ought to be close to Sonic, it is inadvertently implying that Sally does not have a place in the storyline because she is hindering most if not all of the characters from doing so.

Even Tails, who many people argue is Sonic's best friend in the show isn't in actuality. Sonic is a mentor to Tails sure, but Tails does not do anything to compensate for any shortcomings in Sonic's character. There is no equivalent exchange in terms of what both characters have to offer, so one is simply benefiting from the other's kindness here. That does not mean that they are close as characters just because the story is trying to say they are.

Besides no one else having a significant bond with Sonic in the show, what is also offensive about the Sonic Sally dynamic is how much burden it places on the female to complete, and be perfect in the relationship, completely addressing all of Sonic's flaws and needs as a character. Yet at the same time the same is not expected of Sonic to do the same for Sally. Sally's "flaws" such as her cautiousness and the forethought are seen as virtues that the team usually cannot do without, even if she messes for "thinking too hard". There really is no clear line in terms of how cautious you "shouldn't" be, especially in a war where if you do not prepare enough, your whole team can suffer.

So even though Sonic may 1UP Sally every now and then, usually by dumb luck, he is not actually compensating for a flaw in Sally's character. In fact he may playfully tease her about her carefulness, but he never really grates her about her cautiousness as if it were a REAL flaw, and a real problem.

This is not to suggest that any relationship should require two people who are perfectly capable of completing each other in every way. But the double standard is placed upon Sally to be the perfect character, friend, and lover, is largely unsettling, as if by making a perfect (whose practically) token, it makes up for all of the years women have been exploited, when all women usually want these days is to be accepted only if they are perfect, but to be accepted for everything they are as normal, flawed people.

Why is this important?

This is important because many people insist that Sally is a mary sue because she is created to be too perfect, as a sort of author's wish fulfillment. Many people who do not like Sally instinctively consider her to be a mary-sue, although may not all be able to articulate it (considering how old SatAM is).

But besides that, another important problem is that although this is a child's cartoon, understand that it was a part of a psuedo feminist movement that aimed itself at adults and children in various different media. Because of the reverse sexism movement in the 90's, many people including young children at the time, were socialized to falsely believe that feminism was a radical, anti male movement. SatAM was apart of a part of this problem. As a result, the movement died and there is this unspoken hostility towards feminism today due to the feminazi connotations people still have with it.