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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.
RELATED:
#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.
#3
It's a classic but women wearing heels all the time in films and TV series. Honestly, it drives me crazy!
#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!
#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.
#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.
#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”.
#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).
#9
While I love Kingsman holy mother of god do I hate what they did with the Swedish Princess character in those movies.
#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.
#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
#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.
#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.
#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
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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!
#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.
#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.
#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". 🙄
#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
#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.
#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
#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."
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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?
#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.
#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.
#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
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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.
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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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