Everyone went through the list and gave their opinions of each female character individually which is cool and all but I haven't even finished season five yet so I haven't even encountered Seaver yet, or seen J. J. leave, so I'm going to pretend I didn't read any of that...
But to address your question (and I hope you don't mind that I'm doing this in a more general way):
One of the things that fascinates me about the main characters in CM is that, if you ignore their gender when describing them, they don't necessarily seem like they have to be women, if that makes any sense. There's nothing about them that follows the stereotypical media markers that "this character has to be a woman." Most of them go by last names, and JJ goes by a gender-neutral nickname. The fact that they're women only make a difference in a few episodes, or in certain story-arcs, and it's refreshing to see that the characters and their backstories are not reliant on their gender (for example, viewers might expect that the sexual abuse backstory would have been given to a female character, but instead it was given to Morgan). They're not included because they are women (to appeal to a female television-viewing demographic), but because they are people who are good at their jobs (good characters who should appeal to anyone, regardless of gender).
Every so often their gender does become somewhat important, though. When watching the episode where Prentiss is introduced, my friend commented "Hi, I heard there was an opening for a brunette," which kind of plays into stereotypes (they couldn't get another blonde after all, since they still had JJ and Garcia!). Every so often they're called on to become bait, like JJ in "Riding the Lightning" (although it was really her idea) and Prentiss in "52 Pickup." If you saw those examples in isolation it would seem skeevy, but in other episodes you see other characters being used for th the same way (i.e. Rossi sending Morgan and JJ into an unfriendly bar in Montana in "Identity" because they're more likely to get a response, or in "Risky Business" when Garcia interviews the kid because they both have computers in common). And then there are times when it's impossible to ignore that the character is female, like when JJ became pregnant, but even though she became a mother she did sacrifice her job for her child - Will did - so there was an aversion to what viewers might have expected to see happen.
Sorry if I don't make a lot of sense here. I'm bored enough to be on livejournal at work, but not bored enough to reread and revise!
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Everyone went through the list and gave their opinions of each female character individually which is cool and all but I haven't even finished season five yet so I haven't even encountered Seaver yet, or seen J. J. leave, so I'm going to pretend I didn't read any of that...
But to address your question (and I hope you don't mind that I'm doing this in a more general way):
One of the things that fascinates me about the main characters in CM is that, if you ignore their gender when describing them, they don't necessarily seem like they have to be women, if that makes any sense. There's nothing about them that follows the stereotypical media markers that "this character has to be a woman." Most of them go by last names, and JJ goes by a gender-neutral nickname. The fact that they're women only make a difference in a few episodes, or in certain story-arcs, and it's refreshing to see that the characters and their backstories are not reliant on their gender (for example, viewers might expect that the sexual abuse backstory would have been given to a female character, but instead it was given to Morgan). They're not included because they are women (to appeal to a female television-viewing demographic), but because they are people who are good at their jobs (good characters who should appeal to anyone, regardless of gender).
Every so often their gender does become somewhat important, though. When watching the episode where Prentiss is introduced, my friend commented "Hi, I heard there was an opening for a brunette," which kind of plays into stereotypes (they couldn't get another blonde after all, since they still had JJ and Garcia!). Every so often they're called on to become bait, like JJ in "Riding the Lightning" (although it was really her idea) and Prentiss in "52 Pickup." If you saw those examples in isolation it would seem skeevy, but in other episodes you see other characters being used for th the same way (i.e. Rossi sending Morgan and JJ into an unfriendly bar in Montana in "Identity" because they're more likely to get a response, or in "Risky Business" when Garcia interviews the kid because they both have computers in common). And then there are times when it's impossible to ignore that the character is female, like when JJ became pregnant, but even though she became a mother she did sacrifice her job for her child - Will did - so there was an aversion to what viewers might have expected to see happen.
Sorry if I don't make a lot of sense here. I'm bored enough to be on livejournal at work, but not bored enough to reread and revise!