Variety: Kathy Griffin was an unknown comedic actress when she landed her breakout role on NBC’s 1996 sitcom “Suddenly Susan.” But three seasons in, she discovered a sobering truth after grilling her co-stars about their wages. “I had the second-lowest salary on the cast,” she says. “Judd Nelson made four times what I made, and he ended up getting fired.” When her agents balked at securing her a pay hike, she marched up to the office of Warner Bros. TV chief Peter Roth to demand a raise. “It was an all-out brawl,” says Griffin, who wrote down a number on a napkin and slid it over to Roth, channeling a used-car salesman. “I got a raise,” she says. “I still didn’t make equal to what the guys were making.”
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Okay by now I’ve been reading a lot about women in the film and tv industry and their salaries and I would just like to take a sentence or two to exclaim how ridiculously overpaid actors and actresses appear to be – disregarding the pay gaps, of course. Anyway, back to the matter at hand. It is absolutely ridiculous that crazy talented actresses like Kathy Griffin had to wait until she had two emmys to prove that she was worthy of at least the same salary as her male co-actors, some of whom did not even have one emmy or any other credentials, like having the leading male role. I also can not believe the disparity in screen time and role availability for women compared to men. Female roles are drastically less populous than male roles, and because of that, female actors have even less opportunity than men to land jobs.
It’s hard to be a woman. It’s been hard for the past 2000 years or more since patriarchies became more prevalent. I often talk to other women and I often get the same answer to my question: “I wish I had been born a guy. My life would be so much easier.”
It’s two thousand-fucking-fifteen people! Why are genders not treated as equals yet? Just because women’s gender roles only recently changed from basically being a sex slave to their husband doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have radically changed by now.
I’m tired of reading articles about how women are fighting to have equal pay and that everyone agrees. If everyone agrees, WHY HASN’T IT HAPPENED YET?
This is one of the exact reasons why I never want to have children. I don’t want to have a daughter and make her struggle through all of the crap that most women go through. From being told that they can’t do what they want to do because it’s too boyish for their gender role to being scared to walk down the street alone to never being paid a proper wage for their work, women’s lives suck.
I often wish that I had been born a male.
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