(Spoilers for Mad Max: Fury Road to follow.)

Is Fury Road feminist, since it features plenty of strong, kick-ass women? Or maybe it’s anti-feminist, since all those women are model gorgeous?

If we really want to analyze female representation in Fury Road, these aren’t the questions we should be asking.

Instead of worrying about whether Fury Road is feminist or not, it's more useful to look at what it does — how it handles its female characters, what makes it powerful for the audience — and learn from it. Fury Road is filled with women who are strong in different ways and for different reasons, but they are also victims, and they’re empowering not just because they’re resilient but also because their victimhood doesn’t rob them of agency.

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We all know the trope of the typical damsel in distress — a victimized woman whose sole purpose for existing is to be saved and therefore explain why the hero is going on his quest. She doesn’t have the capacity to act independently because she’s two-dimensional, a plot device instead of a character. Fury Road doesn’t give us flat victims. Instead, we see victimized women who participate in their own rescue, working together with Furiosa, Max, Nux, and the Vuvalini to survive.

“ Instead of worrying about whether Fury Road is feminist or not, it's more useful to look at what it does.

It's made clear toward the beginning of Fury Road that the five wives (sex slaves, rather) are agents in their own escape. They might not be able to fight the way a typical action hero would, but they fight for themselves; it’s the wife The Splendid Angharad, not some random savior, who originates their mantra, "We are not things." Miss Giddy tells Immortan Joe that Furiosa didn’t “take” them, they "begged her to go,” because they’re not things to be taken, they’re people who need help. It’s ridiculous how rare that is to see.

The main criticism (that I’ve seen, at least) of the five wives is that they’re all conventionally attractive, which is true. While I’d like to see more representation of different kinds of bodies in media, I disagree that the way the women in Fury Road look detracts from its ability to empower. When feminist criticism is based on what female characters look like rather than how they are presented, it’s not worth anything. Putting an extra-sharp lens on those aspects of female characters is just recreating what media does to women in the first place: putting them in narrow boxes of what’s acceptable. That’s defeating the point of empowerment. They’re a group of assault victims escaping their abuser — regardless of whether you think their appearance is “feminist” enough, that’s a powerful message.

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Furiosa, on the other hand, has gotten a lot of praise for being badass, strong, and, well, “feminist.” I adore her, but the fact that she fights well isn’t the only thing that makes her a great character. For one, she’s a female action lead who has a visible, physical disability, and we see how that disability impairs her and what she does to overcome it. One of my favorite scenes in the entire movie is when Max silently hands a rifle to Furiosa so she can use his shoulder to stabilize it and make the shot he couldn’t make.

“ The Fury Road cast is rich with different portrayals of what women can be.

She’s also not afraid to ask for help, like when she tells Max that she needs him around to help drive the War Rig through the pass. That takes a different kind of strength and only enhances Furiosa’s badassery. Sure, she helps Max and assists the five wives, but she’s more like a real person for not having it all. It’s a different kind of dehumanization to be put on a pedestal and worshipped for what you seem to be, and Fury Road doesn’t do that to any of its characters, Furiosa included.

It’s important to see female characters who need help but aren’t portrayed as being weak or two-dimensional for needing it. I’m sick of seeing endless praise for female characters who do everything on their own, putting them on a pedestal for being “strong.” They’re awesome, but so are the women who need help. And it’s empowering to see women help one another escape abuse and dehumanization. Even Furiosa, the most typically badass of them all, can’t do it all on her own. The wonderful thing about a movie with plenty of women is that none of them carry the burden of being the sole representative of all women, which means the cast is rich with different portrayals of what women can be. They all have moments of weakness and flaws, just like actual people do — and women are people.

“Feminism” doesn’t mean constantly kicking ass. It doesn’t mean female characters can’t be weak. It doesn’t mean perfection to the point of sterility. It means representing women as we are, and that means showing lots of real, flawed, three-dimensional women, not power-fantasy archetypes or generic badasses. As a model for what we should expect and demand from our media, Fury Road does that expertly.

Kallie Plagge is IGN’s Community Coordinator and a little bit bi-Furiosa. You can follow her on Twitter at @inkydojikko.