Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26516813-20190711012913/@comment-995426-20190714090247

Bmwfan2015:

I did touch on the matter of Jennika lacking visual sexual characteristics. Now as a mutant turtle, without any clothing, she is indistinguishable from a male mutant turtle. Real turtles also by and large lack obvious external sexual characteristics, which is why it can be so difficult to determine their sex.

And me bringing up the issue of gender flipping was entirely relevant. In The Next Mutation, there were four male turtles and one female turtle and she was treated like a prize to be won by a male. Because of that unfortunate legacy, some people wondered if something similar would happen to Jennika, and people unfamiliar with the IDW story may have been wondering if she was another Venus de Milo. However, in a future newly conceived TMNT continuity, if there's a great gender balance among the siblings (such as if half of them were male and half of them were female), and they are all raised as equally loved in a family, then there may be an opportunity to bury sexist tropes that have unfortunately been used in the past.

Jennika is already a start towards this, as her portrayal thus far has been anything but sexist. She is a balanced, admirable young woman who can hold her own. But it takes good writers to continually shepherd her in this role&mdash;in the wrong hands, with there being one of her and four brothers, she could easily risk being a Smurfette. There being at least two sisters makes the Smurfette principle (one female among many males) more difficult to fall into.