All Mistakes And Misinterpretations Are My Own - Blog Posts

I must confess that one of the things I’ve always found interesting about Kuvira is how she expresses her gender identity within her role as the head of a revolutionary nationalist army. After all, modern military hierarchies tend to be drenched in masculinity even when they attempt to be egalitarian. At the same time, while revolutions offer the possibility of dissolving old roles and limits on behavior, they also tend to keep a few and develop some of their own. (There’s also the whole issue of how right-wing movements tend to describe the order they are rebelling against as “decadent” and effeminate, while their own movements offer a “healthy” masculine alternative. Of course, Korra never dug too deeply into the gender dynamics of Kuvira’s army, so any speculation would on this would essentially be building castles in the sky. What I can say, though, is that I’ve always felt Kuvira’s character design was harkening to this idea of what you could call “the soldier as woman.” She dresses and presents herself in such a way as to show that she and her army are one, even to the point where the only major difference between her and her soldiers is her collar and the armor on her upper back. At the same time, she isn’t trying to erase her gender and appear masculine/androgynous. She even keeps her hair long and tied up in a bun rather than shaving it off or going for the army-standard undercut. I think all this is what people have been getting at with this “butch/femme” discussion, but I don’t think that’s the best way to look at this particular issue. All that said, I’m not exactly a fan of this outfit from the upcoming comic.

I’ve always seen Kuvira as a woman with a rather austere sense of dress. As I pointed out above, instead of wearing a uniform with gold braid, sheets of medals and ribbon, or a cape and pauldron with elaborate armored segments like in her concept art, she wears a uniform that’s basically the same as every other one in her military. While this outfit isn’t too flossy or “femmy,” the tailoring, color coordination, and that big belt buckle feel a little too...well, bourgeois for Kuvira. It’s simple, yes, but it’s still an outfit you have to put together when you get up in the morning. Personally (and this is just my inner dirty socialist talking), I could easily see Kuvira rocking the zhongshan (”Mao”) suit, or something more akin to the military tunics Stalin wore in the 1920s and 1930s. (Hmm...Jenros, I think I have a Kuvira picture I’d like to pitch to you...)

Question: Why do people call Kuvira butch? Because she has muscle and doesn’t wear dresses or some shit? Are all women with muscle a butch?

Cause really when I think of butch I think of women who are suuuper big and muscular (rocking that T) like Zarya and Scorpia. Kuvira is more or less just a well built/toned female who looks classy as hell in anything she wears. She’s not super duper feminine but she’s not really butch either. She’s more or less in the middle.