Let us all give a big thank you to the one and only Toph Beifong! The blind bandit, the melon lord, the student of badger moles, and the first person to invent metal bending! The one who helped us all find more ways to be courageous, be more confident in fighting back, and be our spunky selves no matter our drawbacks. Toph Beifong was a rebellious little blind girl from a rich family that had always looked down on her, and ran away with the Avatar gang to help save the world because they needed a powerful ally, her blindness rarely ever stopped her. Fair warning, this post will contain spoilers.
Avatar: The Last Airbender
This Nickelodeon series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, was created by Michael Dante Dimartino and Bryan Konietzko, and ran from February 21st, 2005, to July 19th, 2008, having 61 episodes. The show’s world-building is based on Asian cultures and especially different fighting styles, a mixture of fantasy and history in a made-up world. There’s this kind of magic called “bending”, where the types of people who can bend, are only able to manipulate one element, revolving around earth, water, and fire. The air-benders have long been extinct, until the next series, The Legend of Korra.
The beginning of the series is that the world has been at war and needs the Avatar to restore peace to the four nations, but his whereabouts remained unknown until a century later when a pair of siblings found him in a giant globe of ice. After his release, they travel around the world to help figure out how to restore peace, all while being chased by the banished prince of the fire nation and gaining companions and enemies along the way. One of their powerful allies would end up being a blind girl named Toph Beifong, who would act as a force of nature and as someone uniquely connected to nature.
The creators were fans of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings and wanted to create a sense of the same genre that those series did but with a twist. Their inspirations for Avatar: The Last Airbender, consisted of epic fantasy, Anime, Kung fu films, and Eastern philosophy. Their inspirations for creating the popular character of the series, Toph Beifong, however, there is not much information on Toph Beifong’s creation, not unless you check out their podcast, Avatar: Braving the Elements Podcast. One detail that some people may have already learned after being fans of the series is that Toph Beifong was going to be a muscular boy instead, and the creators fought against that.
Toph Beifong
During their travel and making it to a place with an underground earth-bending fighting ring, the three kids come across all sorts of big strong fighters, trying to see which one is strong enough to teach the Avatar earth-bending. They all become shocked when the reigning champion is a small, young, blind girl, at first doubting her before she then proves her skill. In the fighting ring, she’s sassy, powerful, quick-witted, and her head held high, but when they find her again with her rich family, she acts calm, quiet, shy, doesn’t say a word, and keeps her head down. She only acted like this because that’s how the family treated their blind daughter.
Before becoming an ally for the Avatar and his gang, Toph Beifong herself still has to go through a phase of breaking out of her shell, for she is still a kid, and the show repeatedly reminds us that the group is a mature yet troubled team of kids doing their best. After they convince her to join them, she never holds her head down for anyone and we learn how she fights so well despite her blindness, which is her seismic sense, spite, and brute force.
Instead of using her eyes, she keeps her feet bare on the ground to feel the vibrations, a technique called seismic sense, that allows her to know where to walk, where others are standing or sitting next to her, if someone is lying, etc. It’s difficult to explain for any new fans but with her earth-bending, she has a lot of fighting capabilities despite being small and young, so long as she stays barefoot on the ground. There are moments where she’s vulnerable, like when she’s riding on the sky bison, on a boat or dock, or has difficulty controlling sand and metal, eventually gaining control of them through sheer spite.
Representations in ATLA
This show is a masterpiece in so many ways, one being the representation it has for representing different cultures and disabilities. Toph Beifong is only one of the many people in the show who act as good representation, there’s a guy who is wheelchair bound, a formidable fighters who have no bending power, and female empowerment, and letting guys be emotional. Toph Beifong isn’t just a representation of blind people having spunk and being able to stand up for themselves, but also not caring about other’s opinions. She’s a very spiteful representation, unlike Aang who represents the boys who are kind and emotional.
They don’t overdo it by making every disabled character powerful with an aspect that fills in for their disability or shortcomings, which would be unrealistic. Aside from Toph Beifong, there’s Katara who is a member of the group and a water Bender. Before meeting Toph Beifong, they come across a tribe where girls aren’t allowed to use their bending for fighting, only healing, and obviously, it isn’t fair. She fought with the water-bending trainer of the tribe, to change his opinion, holding her own but with a kid against a master, she loses.
He only changes his mind after learning she was the granddaughter of his fiancé who left the tribe years ago, refusing to let tradition control her life, and seeing how wrong his mindset was. It’s upsetting at first that Katara wasn’t on the level to defeat him but it’s realistic and does more to represent her strength than just having her best him. The boy who is wheelchair-bound, during the war scene, instead of letting him stay on the sidelines with a cannon, they put him in a tank to join the battlefield with them! Even the non-benders who don’t have special tricks are shown to still be formidable through their weaponry, like Sokka with his boomerang!
The Importance of Representation
Toph Beifong serves as the main representation for the show, but that doesn’t mean they don’t write about other types of representation. They did not just write her in for fun or to make her a special character, they wrote her in because of how important she would be when serving as inspiration. Representation of all kinds matters to diverse audiences, from different cultures to different types of bodies, ill or disabled. It gives them the courage to live their lives, a seat at the table with other more able-bodied fans who watch the show, and to speak up more about their experiences.
The more that people with disabilities like Toph Beifong or others, become motivated to speak up about their experiences, the more others can learn how they function and figure out how to help them be more included. More inclusion means more community, more community means more companions and more companions means a less lonely world. (This is coming from someone who likes staying at home but also enjoys having friends.)
The reason they wrote Toph Beifong to be the way she acts, is because there shouldn’t be anything wrong with having people who act like her. Many episodes show certain things she can’t do while blind, such as hanging a poster, but they are shown to be small issues that don’t matter in the long run. Having confidence in themselves, disregarding all the doubts people have about them, and finding realistic ways to overcome their shortcomings out of spite, makes for a more interesting world.
Conclusion
Toph Beifong, the popular ATLA character that is loved and serves as inspiration is an example of many other diverse characters that ATLA has. She is a blind person who is independent, spiteful, and powerful in realistic ways. Toph Beifong represents the girls who don’t care about other people’s opinions on their appearance and how to act, she lives and acts however she wants. They wrote her character so well, that even when showing the things she can’t do, sometimes, her friends and even the audience forget she’s blind.
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