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Some people might say that Hollywood is making strides in progressive representation. We're seeing more and more people of color in leading roles, women directors, and stories about people from different socioeconomic backgrounds. In 2024, women led more than half of all movies in Hollywood for the first time ever.
However, that doesn't always mean that the women characters are compelling or realistic. In fact, many people complain that some women on screen and in books still lack agency, make dumb decisions, and are just not believable as real people.
Bored Panda has collected people's hottest takes on this topic from several different threads online, where folks asked: "What's the worst and/or most unrealistic representation of women you've seen in Western media (books, movies, TV series... anything really)?"
Some answers might be predictable, like the always-perfect-looking Lara Croft or the "secretly hot" nerd from She's All That. But others, like Scully from The X-Files, might surprise you. So, check out people's reasoning why they should be included in this list!
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Bella Swan from Twilight. Her dependence on Edward to the point that she can barely even live when he leaves her is just pathetic and a bad role model for the teen/young adult girls that read those books. Those books romanticize female weakness and enforce the idea that having a boyfriend is more important than even being alive.
Exact_Opportunity606:
My speculation on why he couldn't read her mind was because there weren't any thoughts in there to begin with.
OP:
🤣
Luke Branwen 1 month ago
My hill to die on is that 95% of the teen/YA fantasy romances are only seen as "romantic" because the male love interest is conventionally hot. If he was balding, sweaty and overweight, it'd be marketed as psychological horror.
abn_gator 1 month ago
Completely agree. 50 shades of Grey? Romance. Same movie in a trailer park? Horror movie.
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Cosmos in your eyes 1 month ago
The author is Mormon. There are good videos on YouTube that show how the author's Mormon upbringing shows up in the books like this.
xolitaire 1 month ago
Not to mention that the books heavily romantisize his stalker tendencies yuck
Upstaged75 1 month ago
Totally. He prevents her from visiting Jacob (by disabling her car!) and bribed Alice with a Porsche to basically keep Bella prisoner.
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Bewitched One 1 month ago
Wow. I absolutely never even thought about that lol but that’s actually really the best I’ve heard lol
he_aint_heavy 1 month ago
A man didn't write Twilight. Yes, Bella is a simp but this doesn't belong in the sub.
Riccola Tesla 1 month ago
this post has nothing to do with men writing women, just women who are written badly. so it still belongs.
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MalayDragon 1 month ago
Is everyone glossing over the fact that, according to the book he was turned into a Vampire at age 17.. So the moment she turned 18 and they continued their relationship he stopped being the "predator" and she became one.
Riccola Tesla 1 month ago
because just because his body was "17" doesnt negate the fact that he was literally like 95 years old. hes still a predator regardless. now thats not to say bella is innocent, she let a full grown man fall in love with her newborn daughter and was happy about it.
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#2
Every time I remember 50 Shades of Grey exists, I want to projectile vomit in rage. Literally both a book and movie about a one dimensional woman whose entire self worth is validated by an jerk man, that manages to somehow be even worse than Twilight.
Medusas_snakes:
I hate read all 3 books in one weekend when I was getting over the flu. The flu was the better experience of the two.
xolitaire 1 month ago
Well, let's not be unfair. There is a ton of fanfiction that is way better than the source material. But you are right, 50 Shades was not just a downgrade, it was trash written by a thirsty woman who had no idea what she was writing about
Load More Replies... Luke Branwen 1 month ago
Once again, a book that'd be marketed as psychological horror if the man wasn't hot.
Maim 1 month ago (edited)
I understand the hate for this fic/book/movie. I do. BUT HEAR ME OUT. Throughout the story, she consents to whatever they did. She also says no to some stuff and HE relents. She remains adamant that she doesn't want that lifestyle, and HE changes. Just sayin... she had the power.
Riccola Tesla 1 month ago
really think youve missed the whole point of this list and im not really sure how thats possible.
Load More Replies... Andy Williams 1 month ago
If you continued reading after book one page two you are part of the problem
#3
It's a classic but women wearing heels all the time in films and TV series. Honestly, it drives me crazy!
Riccola Tesla 1 month ago
i think the only time it works is when its a superhuman type character. like sure, black widow from the avengers can wear heels, as shes literally a super assassin that could k**l a whole team of navy seals blindfolded. the same way a super strong character can use a 10 foot long sword. if it plays into their character and works with their powers and abilities its less jarring and dumb imo. but when you have a normal woman chasing down badguys in stilettos or a random skinny dude swinging a battle axe 4 feet taller than he is it just makes the whole thing goofy
Lee Gilliland 1 month ago
ESPECIALLY female cops in 4-inch stilettos chasing down men in running shoes and CATCHING THEM!!!!!
#4
It is a trope - the woman in a movie always runs away from violence.
They trip the bad person/monster or hit them with a pan and then... Run away
NO. That thing is going to attack you. Attack it first. Use the pan you just dropped until its head is no longer recognizable.
Women in stories rarely fight back and all of my instincts are the opposite.
I'm not a violent person but I'm also not stupid. Women are portrayed as tactically idiotic victims.
sneaky518:
Women don't just trip, they trip over nothing. It's like a pratfall trip. When you're scared you generally get improved athletic performance from adrenaline, but movie and TV show women fall over their own feet instead.
Earonn - 1 month ago
Hey, hey, hey! We cannot show how to handle someone who wants to hurt them, can we? Just imagine they realise that they can beat a wannabe ra.pist to mush, instead of just running away? What if they carry that into real life? Teach it their friends? Teach it their daughters? All these promising young rich or athletic men who would end seriously injured! No, no, no! Women must be taught that they are helpless!
Sophie 1 month ago
Actually in the Grudge 2, the step mother unalive his a*****e husband with a frying pan. Also in the Resident Evil movies the main charcter is a bada*s. :D
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Auntriarch 1 month ago
Haha that's even better than my Nan's "you could fall over fresh air"
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Zig Zag Wanderer 1 month ago
If there's violence, my partner's going to be in front of me. She was once UK taekwando champion. I've never been in a proper fight!
Roxy222uk 1 month ago
OMG, in the swamp with the Rodents of Unfeasible Size when Wesley is wrestling one and all Buttercup does is stand and scream. If a beast was trying to k**l my husband I’d be hitting it with rocks and sticks, kicking and punching it, trying to pull it off. I wouldn’t just stand and scream. I never understood what Wesley saw in the way Buttercup was written.
Auntriarch 1 month ago (edited)
I nearly kicked lumps out of Mr Auntriarch when I was enacting a nightmare where I was saving him from bandits. As he was cleaning up his wounds (just a couple of scratches really) he begged me to leave him to the bandits next time.
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David Morgan 1 month ago
Actually, generally speaking, performance significantly DROPS due to adrenaline. Especially so if the person is unused to serious physical activity or stress - people think of 'fight or flight', but 'freeze' is very common, and the fighting is usually pretty poor for people hopped up on adrenaline. It ruins your fine motor skills, gives you tunnel vision, can make you selectively or totally deaf, can make you vomit uncontrollably. Adrenaline is bad for you in large quantities.
No Man 1 month ago
The 3rd paragraph is something I complain about in every genre of entertainment... No one (except in action/martial arts movies) ever hits the bad guy enough. If you knock the attacker down and you have the momentary advantage, keep hitting them until they can't get up again...
TotallyNOTAFox 1 month ago (edited)
Maybe more general but it's the same with zombies. There is a single zombie slowly walking towards a character and they freak out... Because basic human fighting skills like a good kick to the chest is never an option in writting
Strings 1 month ago
Read the "Under a Graveyard Sky" series. Deals very well with this trope
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#5
Nearly all of them.
Wakes up. Perfect hair.
Escapes a deadly attack and still has better hair than me after visiting my hairstylist.
the-rioter:
Oh oh, I also need to include:
Woman sleeps in full make-up like this is normal.
The one scene in Scrubs where Eliot and JD hook up the second time around and she's hanging out in her tank top and shorts PJs because her car with her stuff was stolen and when the intimate scene starts and she strips she's in a full red matching bra/panties set under her pajamas.
The entirety of the 3rd Transformers movie where the woman who replaced Megan Fox as the love interest is in a full, white top/bottom ensemble and gets ZERO dirt on her outfit as buildings are literally collapsing around her.
Riccola Tesla 1 month ago
the fact they never get dirty always irks me. you expect me to believe youve been surviving in the bombed out remnants of a shopping mall for 6 weeks eating only spoonfuls of salt and mustard packets from the aunt annies pretzels, and fighting off hoards of zombies every day and your clothes are still perfectly pressed and theres no dirt or gore all over you? how? where in the zombie apocalypse did you find a shower and a drycleaners?
#6
As a woman, we all only have a few standard jobs to choose from:
- kindergarten teacher
- housewife and mom
- magazine something (or, variation: Intrepid Girl Reporter)
- Nurse
- military who grew up with 37 brothers
Those are your only available careers, ladies. Enjoy!
library_wench:
Hey! You totally forgot about the viable career options of:
Owner of a cutesy little shop (that in real life would never make a profit), and
Cinderella job (maid, waitress, or personal assistant to a total b*tch) that you keep until you fall for the rich love interest.
Earonn - 1 month ago
That's not fair, if the movie is about how we have to "loosen up to become happy" we're usually accountants.
Untamed Snark 1 month ago
What about the ones where we have a successful career that we love, a fulfilling life but suddenly find the 'true meaning of life' when we unexpectedly have to adopt/foster someone's kids?
Load More Replies... Lee Gilliland 1 month ago
You forgot Nerdy Girl With Glasses Who Solves The Problem When She Takes Them Off.
Elio 1 month ago
And gets hair straightener because apparently having curly hair is bad somehow.
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Pheebs 1 month ago
Excuse me, but you forgot high rank executive who regrets her entire career because she doesn’t have 5 kids.
Zena 1 month ago
And a sweaty, manly love interest, because the rich power-dudes she's been dating/married to, just don't cut it.
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Laserleader 1 month ago (edited)
Any profession for a leading woman in a show is meaningless, because they will just make it a "s€xy" version of the job, so it seems acceptable. I rarely see women wearing real human clothes, and have real job concerns as a lead character anywhere.
#7
I really hate the trope in fantasy and historical dramas where a pregnant woman is having a difficult birth and goes “let me die, but save the baby” or some other iteration of self-sacrifice.
I get that it’s dramatic but it’s so so ubiquitous and I’m pretty sure that the “it’s either her or her baby” trolly problem wasn’t super common in premodern medicine. More like “yeah you both gonna die bruh”.
Nilsen 1 month ago
If anything: Save the mother. If it's supposed to be pre-modern she would be pregnant again within a year. And it it is supposed to be modern she would be pregnant again ... within a year?
Zena 1 month ago (edited)
You might think so, but historically the decision would be made by the husband/father of the child, and it would depend on how much he wanted the baby (assuming it would be a boy, of course, which any/every doctor and midwife involved would assure him during the entire pregnancy, in order to curry favor). The wife could be replaced, and maybe with someone who would finally produce a male baby (because, of course, that was entirely her failing). And yes, "it's either her or the baby" was super common in those times, because saving the baby mean cutting it out of the mother, while saving the mother meant pulling the baby out as quickly as possible (and hoping that the mother survived).
Load More Replies... #8
I’m sure there’s worse examples but I was always bothered by how the women in The Walking Dead stayed gorgeous and never had a problem with their periods.
fawn-witch:
And no body hair, AT ALL?!? You telling me that not a single woman at the end of the world has at least a little bit of a ladytash?
cant_be_me:
Yep, we want realism in our dystopian/historical fiction, which means all of the r**e everywhere but somehow does not include other realistic physical elements like messed up teeth or armpit hair or untweezed eyebrows or catastrophic sunburn or sepsis from a tiny blister from a bad pair of shoes or any indication of how these people smell with no shower access or anything unattractive like that.
kissmychakram 1 month ago
To be fair TWD pays as much attention to menstruation as every other TV show ever (unless it is a Very Special Episode or some such).
Geobugi🇰🇷🇰🇭 1 month ago
But for men the same. After any apocalypse, every man get a special shaver for having a 3 day beard constantly. And why has everybody dirty clothes? There are shops everywhere, get some nice clean prada shirts, because if you get eaten by zombies you can at least die in clean underwear. Seriously....
Earonn - 1 month ago
The ra.pe argument really shows the true side of those who make it. "I wanna see women ra.ped but seeing their armpits hairy? Ewww!" = "I love ra.pe and will use any stupid excuse to get it shown to me". The reason why I'll never watch GoT.
Luke Branwen 1 month ago
😅 I started reading this comment and thought of GoT before you even mentioned it. I've heard a great analysis on Tumblr about how GRRM writes his books as rapey, grimdark mess for the sake of "being realistic" and yet his worldbuilding is so nonsensical and all over the place that even FROZEN does it better.
Load More Replies... Strings 1 month ago
Ummm... gonna argue the smell issue. Pretty much EVERYONE is gonna stink, which means people get used to it quickly...
Laserleader 1 month ago (edited)
Not everyone, and you NEVER get used to the smell according to reality. In reality, people would find water sources and collect soap. Its amazing how well you can clean yourself with 5 gallons of water and a bar of soap.
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#9
While I love Kingsman holy mother of god do I hate what they did with the Swedish Princess character in those movies.
Earonn - 1 month ago
I might love it, but OP failed to tell us what it was, and I didn't watch the movie. Must be hard to understand that other people can't see what's in your head.
Pferdchen 1 month ago
It was along the lines of "If you save the world, I'll accept a delivery at the tradesmen entrance" but a bit more explicit, delivered to a character she hadn't really met before (IIRC).
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xolitaire 1 month ago
Why is it so hard to see the difference between comedic tropes and degrading cliches? How many male, tall and built characters are portrayed as dumb or "slow" in movies?
Svenne O'Lotta 1 week ago
Two things can be bad at once, it's not a competition
Load More Replies... David Morgan 1 month ago
The whole movie is about absurdist exaggeration of common tropes, and about playing with expectations. In a classic spy movie, the two leads would have done some cool, sophisticated, innuendo-laden bantering. In this movie she says 'trade you s*x for freedom', because that is ridiculous and unexpected. Was it crass? Yeah, it was supposed to be.
Riccola Tesla 1 month ago
"i love this movie that is clearly a farsical exaggeration of the super macho spy movie genre! hahah look they made all their heads go boom" "wow i cant believe how horrible and demeaning they made this strong woman character that is literally only in the movie for 35 seconds and only seen through the slats of a prison door, how could they do this?" one of the dumbest takes ive ever seen in my life. completely negating how important and b****s the actual female lead Roxy was.
#10
Any movie where there is a woman who’s introduced in a power position and then proceeds to do nothing the rest of the film except ask stupid questions and cry.
A good example of this was Jurassic World for me. The main female character is supposed to be the operations manager of the park and is introduced as the stuck up boss type and then the whole rest of the movie all she does is run in heels until she falls at the exact moments when the hero can save her, and ask questions like “what’s that?” and “where are we going?”
It pissed me the off because she’s supposed to be the person who knows about the operations and layout of the park- why would you have her be the person asking those questions?
There are other issues for me, like running really fast through the jungle in high heels, having a perfect clean outfit after a dinosaur fight, and being uptight in the beginning (won’t drink tequila because she’s on a diet) and then her arc is just falling in love and becoming a nurturing motherly woman. All around annoying.
shypster:
They did her assistant so dirty too. Her death scene was so unnecessarily long. For the crime of not wanting to babysit her boss's nephews?
whydonttheysayegg:
My biggest issue with her, on top of everything you mentioned, was the perfectly clean white dress and heels at all times while she is running through the mud. Like, that's not how mud works.
T'Mar of Vulcan 1 month ago
To be fair, the director wanted the character to take her shoes off to run, but Bryce Dallas Howard insisted it wasn't right for the character.
Lee Gilliland 1 month ago
Yes, all men completely understand how women think. Uh-huh.
Load More Replies... Kelly Scott 1 month ago
Then there's the "no, I don't like/want kids" thing, only to become a person who will obviously have kids now that she/he's been exposed to them. *rolls eyes*
FluffButt Central 1 month ago
In the movie Romancing the Stone... As they run away he takes her shoes and chops off the heel. Her: those were Italian Him: now they're practical
Emma London 1 month ago
The Jurassic World lade running around in heels was a joke. The movie was making fun of this very thing. This was discussed in the movie's promotional material.
Crissy Newbury 1 week ago
This movie was my first thought when heels were mentioned. Ridiculous.
Laserleader 1 month ago
Her stunt double wears flats, and it gets annoying when they cut back and forth and I can see all the shoe changes.
#11
A CSI episode where the plot hinges on the fact that no woman would only wear PART of a lacey underwear set (IE, just the panties), especially when the lingerie was SO expensive ($35).
Like? 1) Women can wear super nice underwear and just a plain bra. Or vice versa. They don't HAVE to be a set.
2) Really? $35 is an expensive lingerie set? Even if this was in the 90s/2000s, a set cost at least $60 at Victoria's Secret, and that's not even what I'd consider "fancy" lingerie.
Cadena Norton 1 month ago
There was a CSI Miami episode where they knew the killer was from out of town because the victim was wearing stockings. They insisted no woman would wear stockings on a night out in Miami because of the heat. I was literally living in Miami at the time and never wore a skirt without stockings. They actually even said you dressed her for a night out but not a night out in Miami. I wanted to scream
Svenne O'Lotta 1 week ago (edited)
I remember that one. I live in Scandinavia and I was still like "huh?". Like what if she's the kind of person who's just cold all the time? What if for some reason she doesn't like how her legs look? What if she has sensory issues and doesn't like the feeling of bare legs? So dumb.
Load More Replies... L.V 1 month ago
Male writers underestimate how many women just grab the first thing in the drawer because who cares about matching clothes that no-one will see... Exception being that one bra which is great and will be used until it falls apart, and the panties that are not so good anymore and will be used only during periods.
Roxy222uk 1 month ago
That makes no sense. Most women change their knickers every day but not their bras, so there will be days when they don’t match, if they even do own a ‘set’. For the record, that’s why I’ve never owned a set.
Nikole 1 month ago
I’ve owned sets from VS, but I was young and stupid and wanted my boyfriend at the time to find me incredibly séxy. And thongs. Shudder.
Load More Replies... Zena 1 month ago
I think my favorite is from an episode of Columbo in the 90s (I think), where he knows the m****r scene was staged because the victim's underpants were on backward; they were the "tap pants" style, so not easy to quickly tell front from back (unless you were wearing them). But Columbo knew because...the tag was on the wrong side. Yes, Columbo knows which side seam the tag is on, in women's underwear manufactured in the US vs in Europe. Of course he does. So since they were on backward, the victim hadn't dressed herself in a hurry; obviously the m******r had dressed her to make it look as if the m****r had occurred later in the morning (when he had set himself up with an alibi) rather than in the middle of the night.
#12
I love the ones where the plain nerdy woman just needs to take off her glasses and let her hair down (and undo a few buttons) and suddenly she is a supermodel. She had no idea she could be so attractive if only she took off those silly glasses!
If I take off my glasses I will struggle to correctly identify people standing five feet away. I guess being blind is fine so long as you look good?
Anon:
This bothered me a lot in She's All That. Even though I felt like Zack's character sort of saw Laney for who she was before she got made over, at the same time it was like, was it really necessary? He didn't seem "starstruck" with her until she came down in a red dress, freshly cut hair and makeup and no glasses. I won't lie, I thought she looked cute the way she looked before in the movie, with the clothes that were her, her long hair and her cute glasses.
But guys won't notice you that much unless you are smoking hot, right?
ill-settle-for:
“He had noticed, not that Elfine was beautiful, but that he loved Elfine.” -Cold Comfort Farm
I think it’s possible for someone to find a woman attractive in her everyday getup and still be in awe when he sees her in makeup and a well-cut dress; I think it’s almost impossible to get that across in film.
I mean, fancy clothes and makeup are designed to make us look good. They’re good at it. You can look equally as enticing in good casual clothes and glasses, but that doesn’t mean a man won’t notice when you’re dressed to go out either.
It’s just very difficult to portray that kind of thing in a movie. You can write out someone’s thoughts (if you care to) but you can’t always get them across just by facial expressions, etc.
Strings 1 month ago
Just a note: most guys find women in glasses s**y as hell. Mainly because if they take the glasses off, they can't see how homely we are...
Lee Gilliland 1 month ago
That's what I loved about Jumanji, they loved each other when they were just plain kids.
#13
Black Widow’s “I’m a monster… Just like you” speech in Avengers: Age of Ultron. She’s a monster not because she’s unalived people but because… She’s infertile. An absolute Marvel classic.
PracticalSolution352:
I remember being really excited that they were going to address the moral grey-ness that a character who is an As**ssin (but only taught that) must have… And they did the no babies reveal and I almost cried in frustration. Like I want deep and three demisional characters damn it!!!
Fungus John 1 month ago (edited)
It's literally the other way around. She's saying she's a monster because she's had her humanity stripped away and is basically just a living weapon, not because she's sterile. Media literacy is dead. It's like how people think bane is saying "I'm a big guy....for you" in dark knight rises because they can't put 2 non consecutive sentences together. and deep, three dimensional characters in a marvel movie? come on.
T'Mar of Vulcan 1 month ago
Thank you. She never said it was because she was infertile... She specifically said it was because of *everything* the Red Room did to her that made her a monster.
Load More Replies... Jnk 1 month ago
All the female characters in the MCU are just hypersexualized. Who goes,into battle voluntarily wearing an outfit where your b***s hang out? I realize the creator of the comics is from a different generation, but in making the movies, they didn't have to keep all the tropes! I used to blame the writers. Then, the extra material on one of the entries revealed that one of the worst scenes was actually the actor's own suggestion. Scarlett J wanted to be shown undressing in the back of a moving car. This woman is so inherently s**y, and her outfit leaves very little to the imagination as it is. Why does she feel the need to cheapen herself like that? Also, Natalie P gushing about how she gets to play a scientist and is touted as quite intelligent irl. How does she not see that she is little more than eyecandy? A guy literally falls out of the sky. Is a next level jerk. Leaves after about 2 days, and she spends her life waiting for him until he may or may not return, bc she's so in love??
Astrobloom (they/them) 2 weeks ago
Later in the series, she gets depth. In Black Widow (the movie) she is literally never meant to be eye candy and half of the movie is her just arguing with her younger sister and facing her past.
Load More Replies... Cosmos in your eyes 1 month ago
Also she has the smallest weapon. Give girls the big guns if everyone else has them. I'm tired of women only having the purse shooter.
#14
What's up with all the beaten-up yet so gorgeous looking women in those apocalypse movies?
Perfect trimmed eyebrows and mascara? Dude, their body shimmers under sunlight! Tell me where they got body oil and glitter when the zombies come!
And who the heck goes to a tropical forest wearing short sleeves, the bugs will eat you!
I don't ask for them to be ugly or anything but at least try?
#15
The movie Crazy, Stupid, Love. It has a side story where the young teenage son has a crush on the 17 year old babysitter, who in turn has a crush on the dad (Steve Carell). The story includes the girl taking nudes of herself for Carell's character and his son basically stalking and harassing the her. After repeatedly turning down his advances she has a conversation where she tells the boy that his actions make her uncomfortable.
When the film resolves, she still doesn't date the boy but she gives him her nude pictures!! My brain did a record scratch. What man believes a girl will seek out her stalker, who makes her noticeably uncomfortable, and give him nudes as a consolation prize?! Just. Wow.
The way that was written still drives me crazy and it wasn't even a very big part of the story.
Reddish81:
Yes this movie is deeply troubling - even worse that I used to love it!
Emma London 1 month ago
This reminds me of Sixteen Candles (1984), where the main character Samantha (Molly Ringwald) gives her panties to a friend so he can show them to his friends and pretend he had an encounter with her. Didn't sit with me well then, either.
Lila Allen 1 month ago
Compounded by the " nice guy" she ends up with offering his black out drunk girlfriend to said nerd with the comforting " she won't even notice it's not me" so it's ok to r**e her while she's unconscious
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#16
Any instance where it's implied women faint at the sight of blood.
Comfortable_Bell9539:
And where it's implied that they're cowardly in general - oh god, I should have mentioned that girl in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom... She was useless as f**k, always crying and screaming hysterically.
Crouching_Penn_Hidden_Teller@yahoo.com 1 month ago
oh god, yeah. I wanted Indy to just dump her
Sheena Leversedge Wood 1 month ago
That's why I liked the bit in Game of Thrones, where Jon Snow said about women fainting when they see blood, and Ygritte pointing out, women see more blood than men.
xolitaire 1 month ago
Oh come on there are way worse female characters than Willie. She was literally written as a trope and it was played up for the laughs. Not to mention that Indy himself is deadly afraid of snakes and totally forgets whatever is going on around him whenever he argues with someone. So his competence varies.
Lee Gilliland 1 month ago
That always bothered me about the movie Marnie. She freaked out at the very sight of blood, got it, but how did she manage her periods?
Daniel Atkins 1 month ago
I'd have to watch it again but maybe it was the location of the blood. Anywhere visible would cause her to relive the trauma.
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Alex Kennedy 1 month ago
To be fair, my wife is astoundingly tough and capable and still faints at the sight of blood. Having that problem has zero to do with being weak.
Jnk 1 month ago
Yesss!! The girl in Indiana Jones! I watched it as a kid, so didn't understand everything and didn't know English either. But what stuck with me all these years was the number 1 most annoying character ever in a movie - later to be challenged severely by the guy in starwars 1 - you know the guy... jarjar or something. Put me off SW and haven't watched any of the subsequent releases bc of him! Anyways, that woman! The only helpful thing she ever did was punch someone in the face near the end. And I shouted out FINALLY! YOU DID SOMETHING OTHER THAN SCREAM AND CRY AND BEING ANNOYING! I'm experiencing all that emotion again now as I type this haha! Roadrage-like and 100 % valid ;)
#17
Specifically the book - Bird Box.
I remember reading the birth scene and wondering out loud if the author had ever met a woman who'd given birth before. Unfortunately I have erased from my mind precisely what it was that offended me so much!
alyeffy:
SPOILERS but at least in BirdBox, Sandra Bullock’s character didn’t get pregnant again during the 5 years before they learned the existence of the blind school sanctuary.
For A Quiet Place, the whole time I kept thinking, why the hell would you choose to have babies, that are literally unable to stop making noise when their needs are not met, in an apocalyptic world ravaged by monsters with ultra sensitive hearing. They’re literally endangering the rest of their still alive children by doing so too.
Crissy Newbury 1 week ago
Off topic but this brings to mind the final episode of MASH. It was brutally realistic.
#18
Teyla from Stargate Atlantis. While heavily pregnant, she is captured by evil aliens. Of course for ~the drama~ she goes into labor on their ship, and her only assistance is the awkward nerdy science guy who’s panicking about having to deliver a baby. As they’re running down the hallways trying to make their escape, she has to stop to give birth. It maybe takes 30 minutes? A short enough timeframe that no aliens walk down the hallway and discover them. (Her first baby, by the way.)
The baby comes out clean, and also
looking about six months old. No gushing blood (or other bodily substances). No placenta.
One commercial break later, she’s up and continuing the dash for safety, fighting off aliens with one arm with the baby in her other arm. Her hair is a little disheveled but she’s still got a full face of makeup on.
Okay, to be fair, technically she is Athosian and not human, but ‘Athosian’ is Stargate for ‘we’re going to call them aliens but our makeup department DGAF and in every respect they’re just going to look and act like humans’.
The actress was pregnant IRL and the writers had *months* to try to lampshade it a little! At a prenatal appointment have the doctor comment, “So your people give birth quickly, without any pain or blood? Fascinating!” *Some* kind of half-assed explanation.
I’ve seen some pretty bad on-screen birth scenes, but that one wins the Worst Ever award pretty handily.
Epona 1 month ago
There is a video on YouTube by one of the actors and from Call the Midwife who explains why they cannot film with real newborns. The video also has a real midwife sharing info
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Sean Sean 1 month ago
She was human, just from another planet. Remember in the SG Universe humans were taken from Earth and brought to other planets as s***e labor.
T'Mar of Vulcan 1 month ago
Not in Stargate Atlantis. They were either descendants of the Ancients who went to the Pegasus Galaxy from Antarctica, or a separate evolution of humans in a different galaxy. I think; it was never 100% clear.
Load More Replies... RamiRudolph 1 month ago
To be fair, short births like that are very rare, but they can happen. It's not complete fiction.
Justbecause 1 week ago
There are laws around how old a baby can be before appearing on screen. That's why screen newborns, never look like real newborns.
Panda'sMom 1 month ago
Movie (and TV) studios can't use newborns. And other children have to be a set of identical twins up to a certain age. At least that is what I read in my Grand Uncles journals. He was a director/producer back in the day.
Riccola Tesla 1 month ago
the only thing i disagree with is the "one commercial break later shes up and fighting off aliens with one arm and a baby in the other" like yeah okay? was she supposed to just lay there until they came by to k**l them? do you understand that, for the vast majority of human existence, mothers gave birth on the ground where they happened to be at the time, picked up the baby, and continued moving because if they didnt, then they would literally be eaten by wolves. just because we have the luxury of modern medicine and safer child birth now doesnt mean that 99% of every woman whos ever given birth on this planet got to spend a few days resting afterward.
Siege Rook 1 month ago
I gotta tell it straight, Atlantis had its moments, but was not my favorite. I largely enjoyed it while it was on and fresh, but never as much as SG. It was the start of drift towards BSG-style drama, which was FAR more focused on romance and interpersonal relationships than the actual plot/narrative/storytelling. SGA was nowhere near as bad about it as BSG, but it was a start in that direction. Then they went full BSG with SGU, which sucked until they finally stopped doing that nonsense, and right when it was getting good because they started focusing on an actual plot, it got canceled.
Laserleader 1 month ago
Most filmers can't find a baby fresher than a few months old. Not that any sane person would have their freshly born infant available for movie or tv show sets the first few weeks/months.
#19
Not the most egregious, but it lives rent free in my brain. In an episode of Criminal Minds, two women get boxed in by a car of men in a deserted parking lot at night. They proceed to get out of the car to confront the men. In what universe would that happen????
Patricia Steward 1 month ago
I stopped watching Criminal Minds after I realized that it was just female t*****e p**n.
Jnk 1 month ago
It started out a great show, but JJs actor... so annoying with her facial expression - the one she applied to 90 % of her line deliveries. And the recycling of tropes. Also, I developed an auditory allergy to the word "unsub" haha! Oh, and my biggest pet peeve: the so-called friendship between Garcia and that aweful other actionman-wannabe character! Everything he does, including his relation with her is on his own terms. Then, he berates others for not being team players. I waited for him to leave the show, and even all the no-charisma replacement characters were a welcome relief! And with that out of my system, returning somewhat to the topic: the most cringe thing about Garcia was how they tried to make her this ice queen when she was interrogated before being hired. Her whole persona was infantile and annoying. How was she like that if her true personality was this ice-cold criminal?
#20
I've been watching a lot of youtube videos about Colleen Hoover books lately and boy howdy is it astounding how bad she is at writing characters of her own gender. And equally, how abysmal she is at writing compelling romantic male leads. All her men are next level horrible, and she writes romance. I seriously don't understand how she's published, let alone how she sells as many books as she does. The line "We laugh about our son's big balls," is burned into my head forever now.
Also, I guess she had one or more books she had to edit in later editions because the originals had straight up SA scenes? What the hell.
xolitaire 1 month ago (edited)
Hoover is absolute trash. She has this obsession with weak willed, psychologically unstable women who would take any and all a,buse from a man and still stay with him, because "the s*x is good". Not a single one of her female characters has a backbone. In one of her books her female main character is in a highly a,busive relationship but totally justifies that to herself with weird backwards logic. There is only a single moment of enlightenment when she realizes she is pregnant. That is when she thinks "Oh my god I am turning into my mother" (who was also in an a,busive relationship). But does that short moment of clarity lead to anything? NO. Girl goes right back to being a clueless, inconsequent idiot who justifies her partner's toxicity. Lesson learned? Zilch.
Luke Branwen 1 month ago
This is my issue with "Booktok" in general. Most of those "Booktok trends" are just trash, there's no sugarcoating it. And I'm not That Guy who sneers at ~women reading frivolous trash romance~. Quite the opposite. I think women deserve to read good, well-written romance/erotica instead of commercial slop.
Mreoww 1 month ago
I agree. Most of them depict really bad, toxic relationships, and the men and women are always incredibly unlikeable and unrealistic. I never understand the hype.
Load More Replies... Crouching_Penn_Hidden_Teller@yahoo.com 1 month ago
Check out 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back, it's a great podcast done by a couple of the MST3K/Rifftrax guys where they make fun of bad books and they tore Ugly Love a new one. It's hilarious!
Fat Harry (Oi / You) 1 month ago (edited)
I remember a thread on here a LONG time ago about terrible literature, and Colleen Hoover came up again, and again, and again! Hoover... she s***s.
#21
Tea Leoni’s character in Jurassic Park III. Every singe time one of the men said something about staying safe or what they should do, she would immediately come stomping through the scene doing the worst possible thing and ignoring every shred of common sense. I absolutely loathed that character. The writer or director - someone responsible for her depiction truly thinks women are stupid and useless creatures.
Jnk 1 month ago
I don't even recall that fact for the simple reason that what op stated was so overpowering ;)
Load More Replies... Riccola Tesla 1 month ago
here we go again with media literacy being dead. literally the entire idea of both of the Kirby parents, Tea Leone and William H Macy, was that they were moderately wealthy toxic pieces of s**t who let their teenage son paraglide over an island that they LITERALLY KNEW was infested with dinosaurs. its not about her being a "dumb woman who cant even keep herself safe". her character and the husband character were literally supposed to be the stupidest people possible, because incase nobody noticed, its always the wealthy people in Jurassic park who f**k everything up for everyone else because of their stupidity. thats literally the whole point of their characters, so much so they are both amazed their son has the survival skills to still be alive, because they are abject failures as parents.
#22
Can I just throw in the entire concept of the manic pixie dream girl?
#23
One of the most annoying general tropes in fiction I find is when by the end of the story the only people left alive is the main character and their love interest. It's like the moment two characters show affection to each other and you immediately realize everyone around them is going to die.
Comfortable_Bell9539:
"Oh no, a meteor is going to crash on Earth ! We're all going to end up like the dinosaurs !"
"We should kiss then, while we're still alive"
"Okay"
Fungus John 1 month ago
...but everyone except zorg is still alive at the end of the fifth element. and the kiss is literally to save the universe, it isn't in spite of it.
Fat Harry (Oi / You) 1 month ago
A bit like when Spock, Kirk, Scottie and Ensign Ricky are beamed down to the planet on Star Trek... you know exactly who's going to die.
Auntriarch 1 month ago
I just watched Galaxy Quest again the other night, which made play with this.
Load More Replies... Riccola Tesla 1 month ago
wow, so youre telling me that, the main characters of the movie, the characters that the movie is mainly about, the movies main characters, the MOST IMPORTANT PEOPLE IN THE MOVIE, survive the crisis of the movie? wow its almost as if the movie was WRITTEN ABOUT THE MAIN CHARACTERS. crazy concept.
#24
This is tough, because it is so pervasive that it can be hard to notice when things are wrong, especially in media consumed when young. There are so many depictions of girls and women in books, shows, and movies that I loved when I was young that now horrify me.
Liz Rutherford 1 month ago (edited)
Newton-John was a stalker and Travolta was a creep. But I still enjoy Grease.
Laserleader 1 month ago (edited)
Honestly, I was horrified by them as a kid in the 80's. I never liked how in nearly every movie or show girls would accept a guy who stalked them, abusd them, was horrible to people around them, and they just allowed it after saying a random wimpy "Stop".
#25
All the women in The Birds (old, I know) are so infuriating. Hitchcock was a big time misogynist of course. They simply cannot do anything without a man’s direction!
Aileen Grist 5 days ago
Hitchcock just didn't like people. His men are nasty - but played by men that the public see as 'nice' - Cary Grant, James Stewart - but the pople they play aren't nice at all
Crouching_Penn_Hidden_Teller@yahoo.com 1 month ago
That song drives me crazy and it's about a guy beating his wife
#26
It's not THE WORST but my enjoyment of Baby Driver was lessened bc of how empty and stupid I found the love interest waitress. She has no life outside of falling in love with a dull guy to the point she even puts her life on hold to wait until he gets out of jail? They werent even officially dating!!!!
And also the other thief played by Eiza Gonzales who did nothing but be pretty and sit on Jon Hamms lap.
Fun movie, bad female characters.
Earonn - 1 month ago
Using women to characterise a male character. "He's that big boss, quick, get a young woman sit on his lap, how else would anyone understand that he is the top dog?" Worse interpretation: "a lot of young men only watch action movies if they get t/ts shoved in their face because they're that shallow and stupid". Neither shows much respect for the audience or the story.
Lee Gilliland 1 month ago
Since when has Hollywood respected its patrons?
Load More Replies... Emma London 1 month ago
I think that it was supposed to be an example of "stupid love", like in Romeo & Juliet, who had no business to fall in love in the first place. Doesn't explain the ending, though.
#27
Every anime portrayal of females. I don't know if it has Something to do with Japanese society, but for some reason most females are shown in the dire need of getting a men. Like if they lived entirely for that. There are exceptions of course, like ghost in the shell or evangelion, but it seems to be a trend for some reason.
reesedra:
Not to mention how they're all mentally 12. Anime is creepy and has problems.
JK 1 month ago (edited)
I think the reference is mostly because in these instances they are including both girls and women, whereas it is nearly always an adult male, hence using "men" instead of "males"
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София Харитонова 1 month ago
Blue Eye Samurai is not anime, it's USA-made.
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xolitaire 1 month ago (edited)
Aaaand using the term "females" disqualifies any and all opinions you have on this topic. Not to mention that using Motoko Kusanagi as the image is the "worst" possible choice for this garbage post lol
Betsy S 1 month ago
So you really expect every person writing about non-males to use all the words "women and girls" instead of just the one word "females"? Ok then. Give us another ONE word to replace it with.
Load More Replies... TotallyNOTAFox 1 month ago (edited)
I have to disagree, and I'm not into anime at all. Yeah there are anime that have those tropes, but there are also a lot of works that have very well written women. Violet Evergarden, Black Lagoon, Jormungand - to name some. I'd guess it's more an opinion based on a surface level article read than actually looking a bit deeper into it. Heck, the anime industry probably did a better job in showing strong, independent women than whatever Hollywood tries to do since the last 10 years
Nikole 1 month ago
Yeah, I disagree as well. Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop isn’t like that stereotype at all.
Load More Replies... Laserleader 1 month ago
For all the "female" word haters...anime has a bad habit of having NON humans, so the term female is more appropriate than woman.
xolitaire 1 month ago
It's a harmless term, but it is used in a dehumanizing way among incels. A "female" could very well be a cow or a gnat.
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Siege Rook 1 month ago
Ugh, yeah, I tried to re-watch Robotech not long ago, thinking it would make for novel, inoffensive nostalgic background noise that I could put on while working on a 3d model... and Linn Min-Mei just absolutely k****d it for me as soon as she came on screen and I remembered her entire annoying and ridiculous character arc. I tried a couple of episodes, but wound up skipping past scenes with her so often that I gave up.
M Calad 1 month ago (edited)
Big anime fan here. I agree with that most animes portrait girls and women in very (japanese) cliché ways that are unrealistic and exaggerated (sometimes grotesque). But! Some animes do portrait amazing girls and women. The two I can think of now are: full metal alchemist (I loved the women characters! They were all fantastic. Super strong, wise, smart and independent. Some serious, some bubbly), and Attack on Titan.
#28
I hate when the only flaw they give the woman is that she’s clumsy. I see this in rom coms a lot. Like wow the perfect woman but oh man we’ve gotta give her a flaw- let’s make her clumsy.
Also - I hate seeing skinny/fit women portrayed as constantly cramming burgers/cookies/insert whatever food into their mouth all the time and not gaining weight. Like come on they’re not eating that much and never working out and still looking like that.
Upstaged75 1 month ago
Bella from Twilight admits that she's "so clumsy she's practically disabled". 🙄
Mreoww 1 month ago
Another common one I’ve seen is where the woman has incredibly, almost ridiculously, powerful superpowers, so to give her some sort of weakness, they always give her crippling anxiety/depresion/insecurity. Then the love interest has to come and show her how beautiful she is.
and_a_touch_of_the_’tism 1 month ago
If someone has incredibly powerful superpowers/abilities, imo the best way to balance it is that they don’t understand them/they need to learn to use them/there’s a condition to their use/they can cause harm. I think overpowered characters can be really cool when done well, but they’re so often ruined.
Load More Replies... #29
Periods in "The Banned and the Banished" book series.
Random girl is fine. No sign of incoming period, no previous mention of it. Then suddenly, intense stomach pain, the girl falls to her knees and/or curls up into a ball. 2 and a half seconds later, waterfall of blood, some magic linked to blood activates, and we don't talk about periods at all until it's necessary for magic at some other point of the story. Oh and also, both times, it's the girl's very first period.
Like what ??? What did the author smoke ? It doesn't happen so suddenly like that ! And also, it's good to talk about periods, but this feels way too forced.
Zepangolynn:
Hate to have to point this out, but outside of the magic, that is exactly how my periods went for YEARS, starting from the very first one. No PMS, no other warnings until sudden horrifying pain about five minutes to an hour before bleeding, and bleeding heavily. The pain only lasted for one day each time, so I would curl up in an agonized ball roughly once a month and then go back to behaving as normal the next day. Sounds like this girl has magic endometriosis, which frankly would be a nicer pay off than the ordinary kind with potential future cancer.
LFuculokinase:
Endometriosis pain is so bizarre. I had fairly normal periods for years until one day I woke up in the middle of the night with what felt like a water balloon slowly expanding up my bum until it reached a 10/10 pain. So next thing I know, I have sweat pouring down my body and I start retching while trying to find a position that didn’t hurt. I had no idea what TF was happening, but I was convinced that my anus was about to shot-put itself out of my body at any given moment. Then I noticed it always happened two days before my period. I lucked out with BC working to alleviate symptoms for me.
TotallyNOTAFox 1 month ago (edited)
For anybody wondering what Endometriosis is: The tissue forming inside the uterus at the beginning of the cycle does that outside of it and can cause cysts, cancer and in very bad cases fuses organs together. Extremely painful with the only treatments being hormonal medicine to prevent the cycle to start or if that doesn't work the removal of the uterus - Which still isn't a sure way of preventing it to happen anyways
Batwench 1 month ago
And there are some doctors who will tell you it is all in your head.
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#30
Can’t think of a specific work rn, but the cool girl troupe where super thin, conventially attractive white women eat tons of junk food and drink alcohol like it’s water. But they remain super skinny. I know genetics can make some version of this possible, but still…
(Also they’re not just thin but fit. Like the actresses clearly work out, but their characters do not?).
Cosmos in your eyes 1 month ago
Gilmore Girls. They famously ate junk. AND they fat shame other characters. Rory wrote a bad review of a ballet because the lead wasn't skinny. Thankfully, the lead confronted her on her bs.
Emma London 1 month ago
And sometimes the girls are seen even more atractive because of this. Because everyone wants skinny, fir girls, but not to be seen eating salads, drinking water or working out?
#31
For it's the teen drama and the heavy focus on female sexuality. Which can be fine if done tastefully but a lot of times it just seems to be for shock value or for people to lust over 16 year old bodies (played by 20 to 30 year old) without feeling bad. Like Euphoria. So gross.
TotallyNOTAFox 1 month ago (edited)
At least they are played by adults, if I think of the "comming off age" production called "Cuties"and their audition process.... yikes 😬
#32
For me, it has got to be virtually every single “Bond” girl. I loathe James Bond, with a passion, have done so since my parents made me watch a lot of the movies when I was a child.
I just hate the trope of “I hate you! Now let’s make hot steamy love!” and Bond himself is obviously so much worse but the women tend to be so empty brained and swooning at this gross dude.
There are so exceptions but they are few and far between.
fuzzbeebs:
It's even worse than that. Most of the early "Bond girls" were dubbed over, because they would cast the prettiest young thing they find, who often couldn't act well or even had a strong accent or poor English. I can't imagine these women were treated well at all because they were ONLY there to look pretty. They hired someone else (Nikki van der Syl most often) to record their lines.
Crouching_Penn_Hidden_Teller@yahoo.com 1 month ago
One reason I love Archer, it mocks this trope mercilessly
Luke Branwen 1 month ago
I've heard there's a Bond movie where Bond literally r@pes a lesbian... can someone confirm/deny?
L.V 1 month ago
Roger Moore refused to do more James bond because he was uncomfortable with how women were depicted if I remember well
Elio 1 month ago
I think he started to get creeped out because originally the women were similar in age to him but as he got older, they did not cast older women as the love interests, but ones young enough to be his daughter and he found it creepy.
Load More Replies... Daniel Atkins 1 month ago
Especially the one with Grace Jones. Her character is menacing to Bond until he boss asks her to "distract" Bond. It makes no sense it goes from hostile to I love you and will sacrifice myself to save the world. I know it is Bond movie but some transition is needed.
Fat Harry (Oi / You) 1 month ago
Can't stand James Bond. Such boring predictability. He'll win in the end and there will be gadgets.
#33
A man implying that a woman must be hysterical because she's on her period is the best, most realistic representation I've seen 🤣.
MTheLoud:
This is a perfectly realistic depiction of a sexist man.
FeistySpeaker:
To be fair, when my cramps are bad enough I get pretty damned hysterical... until I get to the medicine cabinet. (And for the maybe half hour it takes the medicine to get into my system.) Ow.
Luke Branwen 1 month ago
What one of my students said: "During a period, our bodies produce more testosterone. So when a man laugs at us and calls us emotional and hysterical because we're on our periods, I tell him we're just acting more like YOU."
Liz Rutherford 1 month ago
I'd love to see a man go through a period. PMS, cravings, cramps, different flows. It'd be hilarious.
Riccola Tesla 1 month ago
i love when s****y people tell on themselves like this. thanks for saving us the trouble of figuring it our Liz.
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#34
The women of the book versions of the Wheel of Time series. They simply cannot stop thinking about men and seem to exist solely to balance out the male characters with their no nonsense womanly wisdom. Basically they all just naturally act like nagging moms, ESPECIALLY to their live interests.
Grape Walls of Ire 1 month ago
I heard Robert Jordan's wife was also his editor. I wonder if that influenced his female characters.
xolitaire 1 month ago
You know I've thought of this too - maybe she did this on purpose to make the female characters less appealing to men?
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Heather Dwyer 1 month ago
TBF: the women characters did get better after Brandon Sanderson took over. Actually, ALL the characters got better. Jordan was a great world-builder, but a lousy character writer.
#35
Terry Brooks, one of the Shannara series, maybe the Sword of Shannara? I was barely a teenager, got hold of this book where the Chosen One was a girl, and I was excited. Yay! A GIRL got to be the Chosen One. She would get to have adventures and save the world.... um, nope.
She got turned into a tree. A freaking tree. Unable to move, unable to speak, unable to think. Utterly passive.
But she saved the kingdom or something! Ha-hah.
Earonn - 1 month ago
She got turned into a tree after all the adventures, though. This metamorphosis was how she saved the world - she replaced the old tree which had died.
Riccola Tesla 1 month ago
yeah a fair number of these posts are literally just people reading the dust jackets of the books and forming opinions on it. she becomes a tree in like the last 30 pages of the book. the whole rest of the book is literally her adventures. the chosen one having to sacrifice themselves to save the world is a trope as old as literature. im so sad that media literacy in america died in 2016
Load More Replies... #36
Personally I hate the supportive woman role, where a female character trains her entire life for something, only for the male protagonist with no experience to be the chosen one.
Riccola Tesla 1 month ago
i liked the subversion of it in the new Blade Runner movie. has you thinking its gonna be a typical "chosen one" cliche until someone is just straight up like "you think youre the chosen one? lol not even close bucko, its that lady in the bubble over there"
#37
I recently watched The Untouchables for the first time and was ready to scream into a pillow at a scene toward the end where a young mother is just so unbelievably helpless.
First, she can’t for the life of her figure out how to get a stroller and a suitcase up a flight of stairs and Kevin Costner’s character takes forever until he finally does the gentlemanly thing and helps her with the stroller.
Then, Costner freezes on the very last step because he spots the man he’s looking for and refuses to let the mother take the stroller from him. The stroller is literally pointing downwards something like two stories of steps. The mother does the soft-natured thing of kindly telling him that it’s okay and she can take the stroller now, but he’s too distracted. She becomes stressed because her baby’s life is in danger but can only helplessly keep telling him to please give her the stroller.
What happens next? The most excruciating slow-motion scene in cinema history. Costner LETS GO of the stroller to pull his gun out and he and the man start shooting at each other. The stroller rolls down the flight of stairs. Does the mother run after the stroller to save the baby? No, she throws herself down on the ground and reaches for the handle but can’t reach it. Bullets fly everywhere, just barely missing the stroller. Does the woman get up and hurry after the stroller? No, she keeps stretching her arms towards it while yelling with no sound for dramatic effect ”My baby….!”
I still get frustrated just thinking back to that scene.
David Morgan 1 month ago
Not to be 'that guy', but there's a couple of points. 1) Those older strollers were made with a lot of wood and steel. They were heavy. It's entirely reasonable that a woman would struggle to pull one up a flight of stairs if she also has to manage a suitcase (again, often made with wood and steel). 2) Ness letting go of the stroller to go for the gun was a stupid move, but he can see an armed man moving towards him, and the guy might easily recognise him and draw his own weapon. He'd potentially got seconds to live. 3) The mother was probably paralyzed with terror - a gunfight has just broken out. People make bad decisions when under massive stress. I don't blame her for not running into a gunfight.
Liz Rutherford 1 month ago
It aligns with the thinking in Capone's time that taking care of the kids--good or bad--was "woman's work."
#38
Miscarriage as a casual throwaway event: This isn't one representation, it is every single time: A woman has a miscarriage so there are a few drops of blood somewhere and downcast eyes as she leaves the stall of the work bathroom and goes back to the podium to deliver her speech/ back to her desk/ back to the law office's conference room. Another option is she just announces at dinner with teary eyes that a miscarriage happened.
Once she is far enough along to know she is pregnant, miscarriage is a fullblown vaginal delivery of the placenta and quarts of other materials and takes hours of real and hardcore contractions. She may not be able to walk easily for a day because of such intense muscle soreness, like a high intensity full body workout. A lot of women now are sent to ER to have a miscarriage and are given anesthetics and have an abortion-like procedure performed to minimize the physical and emotional trauma of having a birth-giving like experience. It is like a 2-3 day traumatic event, not an easy-peasy plot device.
and_a_touch_of_the_’tism 1 month ago
The one fault I have with the show the Pitt is the karmic miscarriage. You know what I’m talking about if you’ve seen it. It made me incredibly angry. That being said, it’s otherwise a fantastic show and I would still recommend it.
Tyranamar Seuss 1 month ago
I had a miscarriage at 5 weeks. It was basically a heavy period with a little tissue in it. No labor.
Riccola Tesla 1 month ago
yeah and then we get instances of people actually trying to be serious about it in their art and it becomes a meme for decades. see Loss as an example. there were and still are thousands of men and women who meme about "uh is this Loss?" and make fun of the comic artist for depicting the worst single moment of his and his partners life. miscarriage is a joke because thats how society treats it.
#39
I was an avid watcher of How I Met Your Mother right to the horrible ending. The two main women on that show were portrayed really unfairly. Lily took on the role of the buttinski nag while Robin's character took on whatever characteristics the writers felt like giving her that season. It wasn't development. It was brand new stuff every time.
Also the men in the show were far more developed than the women. Just watch "Spoiler Alert" as proof. All of the guys' annoying habits were previously established in the show. If you watched it you'd know about them. But they had to make up annoying habits for both women specifically for that episode. Never saw them do those things before.
Lots of flaws in what I once thought was a clever show.
Elio 1 month ago
I think at some point my dad and I were watching it to make fun of Ted for being a d-bag. He does suck. The ending is awful. If the show had lasted 1-2 seasons, it probably could have worked but yeah know. Best thing about it was Cristin Milioti got some money from it because she's an amazing actress. If you want a show with great writing and characters, watch The Penguin. If you are burned out by super-hero movies/shows, it is in the Batman universe but it's not so much about Batman as it is about a really really good gangster story.
#40
Women in any male-written, male-centric film (likely action/thriller). They are robotic, doting, unquestioning/obedient Stepford wives that ultimately end up dying to serve the one dimensional purpose of furthering the male character's plot/development.
Fat Harry (Oi / You) 1 month ago
And yet the top two answers on this list are both written by women.
Riccola Tesla 1 month ago
the same way that men in a lot of female written female centric films and media are a lot of times portrayed as a nice but dumb himbo that couldnt even breathe correctly without his much more intelligent and put together wife there to help him tie his shoes. its almost as if things written for one gender are, plot twist incoming, written for that gender, and employ common fantasy tropes to that genre? heroic man saving the day and getting the girl, or hyper intelligent hyper successful queen of a woman polishing up her s**y boy toy so he can fit into her high society functions.
#41
Natasha romanoff in Age of Ultron. I’m a huge MCU fan and love her but that movie destroyed her character and made her into the ditzy love interest that wasn’t good enough.
Riccola Tesla 1 month ago
they were actually watching "Cockvengers: Cage of Ultraboner" and mistook it for the real movie.
Load More Replies... #42
16 year old me would hate me for saying this, but Scully from the X Files. I was in high school when the show first started, but I bought the box set recently and have been watching it again and am shocked at how little agency the character actually has. I remember 20+ years ago when the show was advertised as having a strong female lead but in hindsight she is there to make Mulder look good by being a straw man caricature of whatever scientific theory the show wants to subvert this week, she has no identity outside her role in the partnership (except when it's narratively convenient, like her father's death), and when the show wants to tell us the stakes are high, something happens to Scully so that she needs rescuing by her unstable, one-dimensional partner.
In the context of early 90s network TV, or the multitude of police procedurals that came after it, it's not the most egregious portrayal of women out there. But I was in high school in the early 90s and loved the X Files, it's been sad watching it back and realising how regressive the gender politics are between the lead characters.
Child of the Stars 1 month ago
I'm not sure this belongs here. The whole point of Scully is to counterbalance Mulder. Even if her arguments are strawmen, I think it would be the same if Scully had been a man. I don't think it's about her being a woman.
David Morgan 1 month ago
This MIGHT have been true in the first few seasons, but was ABSOLUTELY not true by season three and on. Scully was proved right plenty of times when Mulder jumps to the outrageous theory first, she took on and arrested or k****d plenty of villains and monsters, and had a far more complete and fulfilling social life than Mulder - the show frequently pointed out that Scully HAD a life outside the work, whereas Mulder was very disfunctional because of his obsession. Mulder NEEDED Scully to not be like him.
Riccola Tesla 1 month ago
yeah this is just wrong. scully was the reason mulder wasnt in a psych ward his whole career. without her he would have made the wrong decision every single time. she was the foundation for his insanity and one wouldnt work without the other.
Emma London 1 month ago
At the time it was progressive to have woman character like Scully at all in a scifi or police show. It was even seen as controversial that she wasn't "pretty enough" (!!!), as originally the plan was to cast a more conventionally beautiful person (like, dunno Mitzi Kapture from Silk Stalkins).
#43
Can we just talk about the whole stupid blonde girls cliche?
Riccola Tesla 1 month ago
honestly i think Legally Blonde had a hand it reducing the amout that trope is around now.
Elio 1 month ago
There's inaccuracies and some issues with that movie, but I do like how Elle is actually pretty smart. I think people just underestimated her and never encouraged her to make much of herself most of her life.
Load More Replies... #44
Their best friend is either a man who secretly loves them, a frenemy who is jealous of her, or a plain friend who is really not a human with feelings or depth.
Like women have no idea how to have supportive friends.
#45
It's been a long time since I've had to watch it, so it may have changed, but Penny from Big Bang Theory.
Portrayed as unintelligent, wants to be an actor but has no acting skills and can't recognize that, is consistently broke, she can't function without this group of men across the hall and in turn they get to regularly harass her, but that's cute because they're nerds and she's a cool girl.
And she was the only regular female character for several seasons.
Luke Branwen 1 month ago
IMO the whole point of TBBT was turning whole groups of people into laughing stock - women, nerds, autistic people, scientists... Bad show overall.
Riccola Tesla 1 month ago
i think this one misses the point of her character and their relationships, at least as the show progresses, she is the only one of them that can actually exist on her own in the real world. shes a waitress and an actress and lives by herself in an apartment two theoretical physicists have to share, she is a completely normal functioning adult, which is often belittled by the ultra smart characters on the show, but she is still shown to be the most well adjusted of them all. she has a good relationship with most of her family, she understands people, and she is the only link to the "normal" world the main guys have. at first she was just a dumb blonde neighbor but as it progresses she truly becomes the most socially intellegent and common sense enabled character on the show. shes picks up chess in one episode and beats sheldon, she has a high paying sales job and makes more than her Dr. husband, and shes the only one smart enough to outsmart sheldon on a regular basis.
Fat Harry (Oi / You) 1 month ago
But the reverse was also true: they were all socially awkward and relied on Penny to "fit in" with the world. It was a pretty awful show with pretty awful characters, but to single out Penny is to miss the point somewhat.
David Morgan 1 month ago
Virtually every character in BBT was a deeply irritating 'worst case scenario' version of a character type. I cannot imagine wanting to spend any time with any of them. How the show ran for so long I don't know.
Daniel Atkins 1 month ago
I had issue with the seasons where they made here really stupid for example one episode she was totally enthralled with the glue on her fingers and when they had her taking a really really long time reading a comic book and had Amy and Bernadette make fun of her. This happened way too often for someone supposed to be the socially adept in the series.
#46
The entire trope of the “cool girl”.
David Morgan 1 month ago
Yeah, this needs context, or it sounds hugely misogynistic. Women aren't cool? Or women 'written a certain way' aren't cool?
#47
CW shows in general. They're a goldmine for awful representation.
Huddo's sister 1 month ago
CW is a tv network in the US that mostly has teen dramas
Load More Replies... #48
That one episode of Star Trek: The Original Series where they land on a planet that had men and women living segregated.
I remember being most infuriated that the women literally didn't know what a brain was; and they controlled all the men through these weird belts that caused discomfort/distress when the women were displeased with them.
Star Trek did some wonderful things to advance social equality (first interracial kiss, great episode about the laughability and futility of racism, showing a black woman on equal standing with white men) but that one episode left me QUITE salty lol.
HarryJamesPooter:
I just started OG Star Trek! Only a few episodes in and already im just… agog, aghast, absolutely befuddled by the ‘60s sexism. In episode 2, the Thasian teenager tries to attack yeoman Janice, thank his people come to take his a*s back home at the end of it, but after he’s forcibly removed from the enterprise, Janice… cries? She feels bad for that weird little worm even after all his creep-ery?! Wtf was going on in the ‘60s.
and_a_touch_of_the_’tism 1 month ago
TOS is a great show. It is also absolutely HEINOUS in its representation of women. Kirk is s******y aggressive and gets a new piece of arm candy basically every planet he visits.
T'Mar of Vulcan 1 month ago
The episode the person is referring to is TOS, "Spock's Brain", which is universally axknowledged as the worst episode of TOS. The second episode is also TOS, "Charlie X". The picture isn't related to either of those; it's from TNG, "Angel One" in which the women were the strong ones and in charge and the males were weak and helpless.
T'Mar of Vulcan 1 month ago
Don't know why you got downvoted; have an upvote. The paragraphs both mention TOS episodes ("Spock's Brain" and "Charlie X"), but picture is from the TNG epsiode "Angel One" in which the women were the strong ones and in charge and the males were weak and helpless.
Load More Replies... #49
Megan Fox in that movie where her husband takes her to that cabin and handcuffs himself to her?
She goes through this insane physically intense trauma, blood everywhere. And the next morning she’s at this cabin looking in the mirror and her hair and makeup were perfect.
Breadcrumb. 1 month ago
She's not known for acting her whole thing is being a real life blow up doll, so I'm not surprised.
#50
There are many horrible examples in popular media but I have to disagree with the ghostbusters reference. The point of the scene was that they were bad scientists who traded heavily on the cache of being university professors. The librarian stood up for herself and they had no good answer.
#51
In ghostbusters specifically, I always interpreted that as being restated to something metaphysically significant about blood or periods, or possibly checking for signs of a supernatural pregnancy, and not having much or anything to do with hysterics.
#52
Kes from Star Trek is like a two year old married to a man in his 30s-40s. The show also had her lusted after by Tom Paris and featured several episodes of her just being written badly culminating with them writing her off the show to become a neural entity in space only for her to come back as a villain.
T'Mar of Vulcan 1 month ago
"Like a two year-old"? She WAS two years old, but in something akin to dog years. For the Ocampa, one year for them was the equivalent of ten years for a human. So technically she was about 20. She wasn't married to Neelix though, and I think Tom Paris was only about 28?
Elio 1 month ago
You are right. Kes was 2, but her species lives to be about age 7 so she was the equivalent of a 20-something so she was not a child.
Load More Replies... #53
Irene Adler in Sherlock. It baffles me they portrayed her as a lesbian dominatrix blackmailer who falls in love with Sherlock. She was never a villain in the original Scandal in Bohemia, instead she was a lady who just wanted to be left alone and marry for love. Sherlock was the villain in the story because he aided the scandalous king. In a SiB Irene is the one who is victorious but in Sherlock not only does she need Moriarty's help to pull off her scheme she also loses to Sherlock and needs to be rescued by him later. And her whole thing about being a lesbian in love with a man ended up going nowhere because they never followed through with the implications that Watson could also not be the sexuality he identified as.
liam newton-harding 2 weeks ago
The writers did Irene soooo badly in that episode...in the books she BEATS Sherlock...and yet they had him save her, in the show. This strong, intelligent (as intelligent as Sherlock) woman, tuned into a damsel-in-distress.
#54
I thought that was Egon, and it's kind of a joke that he's completely socially inept around women, to the point he's completely oblivious to Janine hitting on him.
AvailableAfternoon76:
Thank you for pointing this out. I was afraid to mention this, but yeah. The joke was making fun of Egon. His questions were absurd, inappropriate, ridiculous, etc because he's socially inept. To a comedic level.
No_Marsupial_8678:
It's also a dig at older psych researchers who tried to blame pretty much anything a woman did on her uterus. It's a multilayered joke and has no business being in this thread. OP should be embarrassed that it was their go to example of a real issue. It isn't even like Ghostbusters doesn't have other problematic scenes, but that isn't one of them.
#56
Ok I remember that line from Ghostbusters and you're *meant* to cringe. Also, on a serious note, poltergeist activity is "traditionally" thought to be linked to puberty in young girls in some way. Of course it's all horse..., but that's the reference the film is trying to make. And it's a COMEDY. These "heroes" are dysfunctional socially inept nerds - I remember the scene with the ESP cards where he's essentially trying to get into the woman's pants by making her believe she's psychic. It's not supposed to be a role model, you're supposed to laugh AT them.
Now if you want bad female stereotyping how about Weird Science? But even that was tongue in cheek iirc and I think the nerds get taught a lesson in the end (?). It's been multiple decades since I've seen either film.
#57
I find that the most egregious depictions of women, in terms of realistic scenarios and behavior, is to be found in pornographic films. The situations where a woman is depicted as being willing to have intercourse with strangers, or where she becomes trapped within or beneath common household furniture or appliances, seems to strain credulity.
Roxy222uk 1 month ago
Becomes trapped beneath furniture or household appliances? Is this common in pørn?
David Morgan 1 month ago
As stupid as it sounds, yes. "Oh, I was dusting under the couch, so I crawled under it to get all the dust and now I'm stuck, with only my b*m sticking out. Surely no-one will come along and take advantage of me...". There's a whole genre of this type of thing.
Load More Replies... nottheactualphoto 1 month ago
Pоrn is part of the entertainment industry. Just like sports, movies, etc.
Load More Replies... Strings 1 month ago
My brother had an extensive p**n video collection. I once spent a weekend (he was gone) fast forwarding through the s*x scenes, looking for a plot. And actually found one! One, out of like 200+ movies...
Luke Branwen 1 month ago
Well, there's a new-ish category called "p0rn for women" which focuses more on story, emotions, genuine connection between the actors etc. Well, I'm a man, but I still say it's leagues better than the normal stuff.
Load More Replies... #58
Technically the line, "Are you, Alice, menstruating right now?" is supposed to show that Bill Murray's character in Ghostbusters was a sexist tool. That's why the other librarian immediately asks what THAT has to do with anything.
If you want to be annoyed, look at how they butchered every female character in the second Ghostbusters.
liam newton-harding 2 weeks ago
Venkman is NOT a nice character in that movie...like at all..in the first half he is an actual predator...go back, watch his interaction with the male, and female students.
#59
Any historical movie or a movie based in the 1900’s. The women are rarely fleshed out characters or have any roles. Played off as there weren’t women that space at that time. It pusses me off when it’s in an otherwise great movie. See Ford v Ferrari or Oppenheimer. The women only exist to be there for the men, even when the real life women had accomplishments that would’ve fit right into the movie. But they get dumbed down or de-complexified (my word) so the men can shine. Emily Blunts character was terrible for this.
Riccola Tesla 1 month ago
i also dont agree with this one as its truly how they were in real life a lot of the time. the vast majority of important and intelligent women are not recognized during their lifetime. very few people during their lives truly understood that they were intelligent beings. Eisnsteins wife was literally just as smart as he was but she wasnt recognized as such until decades after both of their passings. the same with Oppenheimer. Emily Warren Roebling is the reason the Brooklyn Bridge even exists, and it wasnt until the early 2000s that anyone other than historians or bridge engineers knew anything about her. the depictions of women in historical pieces are exactly how women would have been seen by their husbands and society at large during that time.
T'Mar of Vulcan 1 month ago
It took me a while to even realize it was Emily Blunt; whatever they did to her hair made her almost unrecognizable.
Cosmos in your eyes 1 month ago
Yeah I was surprised Emily Blunt took the role. She did what she could with it, I guess. I found the entire movie boring honestly.
#60
The waitress girl in baby driver. I cant remember her name, and I stopped watching the movie because of how unabashedly idiotic it is. Edgar wright is a man child.
What do you think ?
angel_baby834 1 month ago (edited)
The fact that no woman ever puts her hair in a d**n ponytail or bun!! I first noticed it in This Means War - shes out playing paintball and doesn’t at least stick her hair in a ponytail?? And putting headphones on over hair…. At least tuck your hair behind your ears first! Unrealistic hair expectations 🤣🤣
TotallyNOTAFox 1 month ago (edited)
Or how women always have long or at least medium long hair in zombie movies - the first thing any smart person would do is getting a very short machine cut to remove a critical grabbing point
Load More Replies...
NJ P 1 month ago
I'm always astonished how women in management or scientific jobs in films and TV are always wearing low-cut, cleavage-baring tops and stilleto heels. Far from realistic.
Child of the Stars 1 month ago
My grandma was a nurse and used to giggle at nurses in medical shows having perfectly manicured long nails and wearing heels.
Load More Replies...
TotallyNOTAFox 1 month ago
I'd add to the list: The woman full of toxic masculinity. Captain Marvel is a good example for this and Disney in general did that a lot in their IPs in recent years. If the writers can make a woman look strong only by turning her into a man and strip away any flaws it's not a good representation of the character nor their writting skills
RamiRudolph 1 month ago
You're right. Like Galadriel in the Rings of Powers show. Galadriel in the books was both feminine and powerful. In the show, she has to fight with a sword and boss other characters around and act completely masculine to be any kind of strong.
Load More Replies... Kelly Scott 1 month ago
I get tired of women being portrayed as strong only when they have kids to live for. I loved Linda Hamilton's character in Terminator II, but even she only did what she did because she had a kid. Then there's the woman scientist in all those disaster movies. You know, the one who looks like she's 14 and is already head of the whole department and she's always got the nerdy, dumb guy or the nerdy dumb woman in glasses playing her sidekick.
Rachel Reynolds 1 month ago
This happens more in Korean and Chinese dramas, but a woman will be introduced as a b****s, unbeatable fighter...until she meets the male main character, then she becomes a helpless waif who constantly needs rescuing.
Mreoww 1 month ago
I don’t think anyone’s mentioned the tomboy with ~10 brothers yet? That one does it for me.
Rachel Reynolds 1 month ago
"Where'd you learn to fight?" "Well, I have three brothers. John was captain of the chess team, Tommy likes to dress in drag, and Paul is super empathetic and cries at cat videos. Like hell I was going let anyone pick on them."
Load More Replies...
angel_baby834 1 month ago (edited)
The fact that no woman ever puts her hair in a d**n ponytail or bun!! I first noticed it in This Means War - shes out playing paintball and doesn’t at least stick her hair in a ponytail?? And putting headphones on over hair…. At least tuck your hair behind your ears first! Unrealistic hair expectations 🤣🤣
TotallyNOTAFox 1 month ago (edited)
Or how women always have long or at least medium long hair in zombie movies - the first thing any smart person would do is getting a very short machine cut to remove a critical grabbing point
Load More Replies... NJ P 1 month ago
I'm always astonished how women in management or scientific jobs in films and TV are always wearing low-cut, cleavage-baring tops and stilleto heels. Far from realistic.
Child of the Stars 1 month ago
My grandma was a nurse and used to giggle at nurses in medical shows having perfectly manicured long nails and wearing heels.
Load More Replies... TotallyNOTAFox 1 month ago
I'd add to the list: The woman full of toxic masculinity. Captain Marvel is a good example for this and Disney in general did that a lot in their IPs in recent years. If the writers can make a woman look strong only by turning her into a man and strip away any flaws it's not a good representation of the character nor their writting skills
RamiRudolph 1 month ago
You're right. Like Galadriel in the Rings of Powers show. Galadriel in the books was both feminine and powerful. In the show, she has to fight with a sword and boss other characters around and act completely masculine to be any kind of strong.
Load More Replies... Kelly Scott 1 month ago
I get tired of women being portrayed as strong only when they have kids to live for. I loved Linda Hamilton's character in Terminator II, but even she only did what she did because she had a kid. Then there's the woman scientist in all those disaster movies. You know, the one who looks like she's 14 and is already head of the whole department and she's always got the nerdy, dumb guy or the nerdy dumb woman in glasses playing her sidekick.
Rachel Reynolds 1 month ago
This happens more in Korean and Chinese dramas, but a woman will be introduced as a b****s, unbeatable fighter...until she meets the male main character, then she becomes a helpless waif who constantly needs rescuing.
Mreoww 1 month ago
I don’t think anyone’s mentioned the tomboy with ~10 brothers yet? That one does it for me.
Rachel Reynolds 1 month ago
"Where'd you learn to fight?" "Well, I have three brothers. John was captain of the chess team, Tommy likes to dress in drag, and Paul is super empathetic and cries at cat videos. Like hell I was going let anyone pick on them."
Load More Replies... You May Like 63 Wildest TV Show Episode Cost A Comprehensive List Of Marvel Movies Based On Marvel Comics Publications 50 Best Horror TV Shows For Every Phobophile Out There
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