If you’re thinking that I’ve made this character up, then you’ve probably noticed something about most of our other cultural heroines lately. From college students to lawyers, nearly all of them have one thing in common (besides being underweight): Almost every one is fragile to the core.

That sounds bizarre when you consider the way our culture simultaneously pushes the image of the strong woman. The U.S. women’s soccer team members are role models for millions of little girls. Preteens yell, "Girl power!" at Spice Girls concerts. And the female-centered Wicca, the hip religion of the moment, is attracting followers from high-school students to members of the military. To all outward appearances, women have never had it so good.

So why are there so many frail butterflies onscreen?

Ally McBeal is the most prominent example, with her devouring insecurities and complete inability to make up her mind about what man she wants, or what she wants in a man. Bridget Jones, from a novel by Helen Fielding, has been called "Ally’s British cousin." Given to constant and relentless self-examination, she’s even more insecure, if that’s possible, than Ally. The success of Bridget Jones’s Diary spawned a whole genre of dissatisfied-single-women novels, with titles like The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing. Likewise, television is swamped with professionally successful but unhappy young women who loudly tell their troubles to everyone in sight – such as WB’s Felicity, always confiding her endless romantic dilemmas to a tape recorder. Not that talking helps these girls much; they just appear to be in constant need of catharsis.

And though Felicity is in college, we hear relatively little about career planning, or tough professors, or any of the many things besides sex that usually occupy at least some space in an undergraduate’s mind. Women all over the screen may have great careers, friendships and hobbies, but they can’t find lasting satisfaction in anything. In fact, most of them seem resigned to living their lives on the verge of an emotional breakdown.

Stacey D’erasmo laments in the New York Times, "The new single girl … embodies in her very slender form the argument that not only is feminism over. It also failed: Look how unhappy the ‘liberated’ woman is!" Washington Post writer Susan Isaacs divides cultural heroines into "brave dames" and "wimpettes," and is distressed to see so few of the former on today’s screens:

Too many of the characters I’ve gotten to know in the past decade … are not lively or courageous spirits to reflect the times. I miss the Jane Eyres, the Hildy Johnsons of His Girl Friday, the Mary Richardses of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." … Too many of today’s female protagonists are … the tremulous, the willfully naïve, the self-absorbed and self-pitying.

So what about the example I gave earlier, the writer who kept radio station WENN from falling apart? Is she an exception to the "wimpette" trend? Well, yes and no. Betty Roberts might have been a "brave dame," but she wasn’t a ’90s woman. She appeared on a series, "Remember WENN," that ran four seasons on cable and was set in the early 1940s.

Some might argue that this portrayal of a strong single woman from our grandmothers’ generation is an anachronism – a modern woman projected into an old-fashioned setting (rather like "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman"). But the fact is that classic movies, like classic novels, were full of "brave dames."

Take Isaacs’s example of Hildy Johnson. More than two decades before the sexual revolution, this tough-talking reporter ends up having it all; she not only gets her scoop and helps vindicate an accused murderer, but also wins back her ex-husband. Similarly, Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady stands up for herself, refuses to be intimidated, and gains both an education and the heart of her tutor. Both have their moments of vulnerability, but they also have the strength to get through them.

Actresses like Rosalind Russell, Katharine Hepburn and Barbara Stanwyck built careers on portrayals of such women – women who attained their dreams through intelligence, hard work and sheer guts. Isaacs believes that this was permitted in the old days only because female independence was an interesting novelty. But she can’t give us a good reason why all we hear from Hollywood in our liberated age is how hard things are for an actress who isn’t 16 and rail-thin. Her only explanation is that, somehow, artists and audiences are all secretly afraid of strong women.

Actually, I think the real problem is that we can’t decide what it means to be a strong woman. Many of today’s fictional women seem to think their strength lies in being sexual predators. Thus the women of "Sex and the City," too tough and glamorous for matrimony, go through men (mostly losers) like facial tissues. And thus the creators of "Ally McBeal" repeatedly try to prove that women have all kinds of fantasies just like men and enjoy having trysts without emotional attachment, which is why their heroine recently gave herself to a stranger in a car wash. This is true strength, we’re told – the power to enjoy yourself and live in the moment without remorse.

Except that Ally, as mentioned before, is an emotional mess, and Carrie of "Sex and the City" keeps absorbing callous treatment from the closest thing she has to a steady boyfriend. Freedom from restraint was supposed to liberate women, and some think it has; it deadens their emotions, and they believe this makes them equal to men. ("Why … should you feel anything?" asks someone on "Sex and the City. "Men don’t. I don’t feel anything after I have sex. I’d like to, but what’s the point?") Or else it leaves their feelings in a confused tangle. As Wendy Shalit writes in A Return to Modesty, "A young woman today has basically two options open to her: to pretend she’s a man, or to be feminine in a desperate, victim-like way."

Having uprooted themselves from traditional standards of character, the women of today’s culture – like many of their real-life counterparts – find that they have no roots left at all. They’re too busy scrambling to find the strength to meet the pressures of everyday life to focus on anything outside themselves and their own wants. So Felicity can go off with the boy she knows her best friend likes just for the adventure of it, and we’re not supposed to judge her. We’re just supposed to believe that she’s a morally complex heroine, who doesn’t see things as black and white.

What gave a Hildy Johnson or a Mary Richards the backbone that made us admire them? Taking them as a whole, the cultural heroines of yesterday subscribed to a set of values that appeared to be very fulfilling. Self-respect was high on that list; so were kindness, courage and loyalty. "I always thought … that I could trust my friends, and they could trust me," is how Betty, a throwback to that "unenlightened" time, explains it. Most of them were heroines in a culture that believed in a moral code created by God; they tried to live by that code. Some people may have found it restrictive; I think it’s safe to say that a lot more found it freeing. It gave them that sense of self-worth that their descendants can’t find.

We can’t go back to those times, say the people who dictate cultural trends; that’s too simplistic a solution. Well, they’ve certainly done their best to help society leave the values of that time far behind. But I know many Christian women – and men – who live by those values, who have found their identities in the God Who promised, "My peace I give you; not as the world gives do I give to you." These people, if represented in the media, would introduce viewers to some truly "lively and courageous spirits."

"What do single girls want?" asks Newsweek, and can’t answer the question. Actually, it’s simpler than they think. Whether married or single, women want what they’ve always wanted: satisfaction and fulfillment. The problem is that too few know where to go to find them. The path to true strength and peace of mind is really the same for an Ally McBeal as it is for a Betty Roberts, because the truths that mark the way are timeless. It’s just a question of finding them again.