Media on GOOD: Among her many credits, Geena Davis has played a professional baseball player, president, and housewife-turned-outlaw, Thelma. Her portrayals include steely-spined women who speak their minds. Yet when Davis became a mother and sat down with her toddler daughter, who is now ten, she noticed women were conspicuously absent. “Especially in G-rated movies, it seemed that there were far fewer female characters [compared] to male characters,” Davis told GOOD. She began asking other people if they’d noticed the imbalance and “most people either didn’t notice, or said, ‘No, no, no. That’s not true anymore. That’s all been fixed.’”
Via Jezebel
4 comments:
I normally find these kinds of articles frustrating and annoying. Not because I don't think that this inequality exists but because I usually feel that the way for women in those situations to surpass the stereotypes and glass ceiling is to just be better. But little girls can't do that, especially if they don't even realize that those things exist yet. Worse yet it is pre-programming boys to be more sexist, they don't even know what that word means yet!
Davis has a great point in that, 'anyone alive has only ever seen this gender imbalance in the media they watch, it really starts to look normal'. Thinking back, when I was really young, any shows that I watched only had women as supporting, and the only show that I can think of from pre-teen age was Kim Possible. But even then as awesome as she was, her sidekick was an endearing scaredy cat boy. It was like you couldn't have two powerful capable characters, someone had to be taking a backseat. I like the idea of 'sharing the sandbox equally' because then kids can see that both parties can be successful and strong, without having to step on the other.
I think back on my childhood, and I didn't see the imbalance in gender in media as strong as this article leads the reader to believe it is. Of course I watched the older Disney movies where the women were either the villain or a princess, but the TV that I would watch had such characters as Ren in Even Stevens, who was portrayed as annoying sometimes, but was very smart); and Lizzie McGuire (who was semi-realistic for a 13 year old girl). While not exactly lawyers or doctors, and their mothers were stay at home moms in the shows, I never saw those characters and felt as though I had to be a stay at home mom. Now, I don't know about the state of children's media right now, but it could have fewer interesting female characters and more female characters who seem to limit girls' minds. While a nice concept and movement, I think girls will generally turn out alright and find what their passion and interests are. TV is influential in a child's life, but rarely is it so influential that it affects career goals.
What a powerful video, and an incredibly thought-provoking article. I never really considered how much TV impacts the young girls of today, because I was much more of a go-play-outside kid than a sit-on-the-couch-and-watch-TV kid. But there are so many little girls out there whose parents place them in front of the television so that they will be entertained and keep out of the way, that it truly is important to consider what exactly is being put in front of them, and what they are getting from the characters that they are bound to identify with. And perusing kids' shows and movies, I completely agree with Geena Davis. It's weird to see women in positions of power and confidence in the workforce; they are just included to look good and move the plot along as one or more of them men in the show have something to do with her. If girls are really spending seven hours a day in front of the TV (which should also be fixed), the shows should be used to educate them and empower them, which is definitely not happening right now.
This gender imbalance definitely does exist, and is a situation that needs to be dealt with. The solution comes through awareness and action initiatives such as the one headed by Geena Davis, but also a more complex and in-depth look at the animation and cartoon industry. I remember reading somewhere that women are not very prominent in the animation industry, and it seems that if there were more women working in it, there wouldn't be such a noticeable gender gap in kids' movies and cartoons.
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