Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday said she was "really disappointed" by The Hunger Games trilogy for the literary ending to protagonist Katniss Everdeen.
—Spoiler alert below for anyone who hasn't read the books.
Gillibrand lamented the author Suzanne Collins' choice for
Katniss, telling the audience that she would have preferred a female lead that got involved in governing instead of taking a back seat to public
life.
"I'm reading it as sort of a women's rights book and let's see how this young women empowers herself to do great things. And so the first book you see her really coming out of herself and becoming a leader. In the second book she literally starts a revolution … And so I'm thinking this is a great book to like talk about women's leadership and what it takes, but I was really disappointed in the ending," said Gillibrand during a Buzzfeed's Brews interview.
"In the ending it seemed to me all she did was — importantly she survived — but she just gets married, has kids and fades away. Like she plants roses, that's all she does. It's such an anticlimactic ending," Gillibrand added.
The New York senator said she would have liked an end to the very popular series where the bow and arrow toting heroine instead runs for office.
"But you know who does that? Her ex-boyfriend. So he goes off and he runs the world and runs for their legislature. I was very disappointed because I wanted her to take that experience and not sit on the sidelines," she said.
Gillibrand also told Buzzfeed that if there were more female legislators in Congress, there would be more compromise and less gridlock.
"The bottom line is, if we had 51 percent of women in Congress, we would have never spent the last two years debating access to birth control," Gillibrand said.
"Even the most conservative women in the Senate I have common ground with."
