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People Are Sharing What Unrealistic Things About Women Shown In Movies Bother Them The Most And Here Are 19 Examples
If you ever needed to run from a Titanic-sized Tyrannosaurus rex, you probably wouldn’t do that in Louboutins. This part, we can all agree on.
But it seems like many Western film directors have a whole different view of what women should be like onscreen. Teens with clear skin? Check. Women always wanting a baby? Yep. Putting freakin' lotion on before going to bed? Done. But life isn't a 2-hour-long reverie in motion and things are very different here.
No wonder people are getting seriously fed up with how unrealistically, and often just plain wrong, many popular movies portray female characters. Let’s take a look at some of the worst faux pas against women in film and hope this will be a wake-up call to whoever believed this nonsense.
Discover more in People Are Sharing What Unrealistic Things About Women Shown In Movies Bother Them The Most And Here Are 30 Examples
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#1
Live in huge, beautiful apartments when they work as underpaid journalists or small-shop owners.
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#3
"25-year-old actresses are cast as high schoolers, while 35-year-old actresses are cast as mothers of high schoolers."
To find out more about why women’s representation onscreen is often so flawed and unrealistic, Bored Panda talked to MaryAnn Johanson, a pioneering online film critic at FlickFilosopher.com and the author of “Where Are the Women?”—a project which broke down the ways in which women are dismissed on screen.
MaryAnn explained that unfortunately, “women are so often portrayed as nothing more than support and encouragement for men as they undertake journeys of growth and discovery.” Moreover, women are also “often depicted as 'perfect' and in no need of growth and discovery themselves.”
Such representation of female characters on screen is truly harmful and gives a “terrible example” to show both boys and girls, men and women.
#4
"Women in movies are always 'cool' because they’re “not like other girls.” This is established by showing them eating chicken wings, enjoying sports, or playing video games. They do all these things in full faces of makeup wearing designer clothes."
#5
All women wanting babies, and those who say they don't end up changing their minds and having them anyway
#6
"Working out without putting their hair up - the worst offender is She’s the Man, that final scene where Amanda Bynes plays the whole second half with her hair just whipping in her face drive me nuts. Someone would have given that girl a hair tie."
According to the film critic, the second-worst thing about how women are diminished onscreen has to do with showing them as types. “So many movies have gangs of men doing whatever they're doing: The Leader, The Bad Boy, The Nerd, etc. And then there’s The Woman,” MaryAnn explained.
Representing women as a type gives viewers the wrong impression that female characters “don’t come in the same full range of human interests and talents as men do.”
MaryAnn said that she doesn’t really know the answer to just why so many male filmmakers choose this kind of female portrayal.
She wondered whether it may be “because male filmmakers are projecting their own fears about themselves onto female characters.” Or, “because male filmmakers are afraid of acknowledging that women come in the same full range of humanity—strong and weak, emotional and stoic, messed-up and got-it-together, and so on—as men do?” It may as well be because “male filmmakers don’t know any real women?”
#7
"For the love of god, put in a teenager with acne or braces or something into a film set in a high school. Teenagers are always depicted with, clear skin and fully developed. NOBODY looked like that in high school!"
#8
"The way women have to always dress ‘feminine’ even in disaster situations! Like Jurassic World – they have their main female character running away from DINOSAURS in high heels...freaking t-rexs and velociraptors and running through the jungle...but no let’s make sure she stays in her skirt and heels (and her makeup will be messy but still pretty), so stupid."
#9
"20-year-old actresses are cast as surgeons, astrophysicists, history professors, etc. Unless they were baby geniuses, there is no way someone that young would have risen so high in her profession (especially considering that, because of prejudice and discrimination, it often takes women longer to climb the ladder.)"
MaryAnn explained that until the entirety of the filmmaking industry, from writers and directors to studio executives and festival programmers, is much more gender-balanced, nothing will change. “Storytellers tell stories that are important to them. We need more different kinds of people telling stories, stories that get seen and heard, than we have now.”
The film critic believes that the worst part of such flawed female representation is that it generally tells the audience that women don’t matter that much. “Movies matter. Pop culture matters. The stories we tell each other matter. Children are listening, and they hear what we are saying.”
MaryAnn warned that these “kids become adults with warped ideas about the wide variety of women’s actual experiences—which are so much wider than what we see onscreen—and what women want out of life, which is so much more than what we see onscreen.” She concluded that this is totally unacceptable, and that “the culture that has so far not accorded women the same full humanity it accords men has to change.”
#11
"I really hate how women always seem to be really skinny (and it’s not the women’s fault at all, I don’t want to shame them for being skinny) but I would like to see a woman who wasn’t necessarily plus-size (though we need more leads who are) but weighs 160 pounds rather than 120."
#12
"What REALLY p****s me off is women always having perfect makeup and hair in catastrophe movies. For example, in Bird Box, the world has 'ended' four years ago and Malorie still has perfect eyelash extensions. How???"
#13
Women running at almost top speed in high heels while in the real world, I can barely walk in them after a couple hours.
#14
"I can't even with giggly fashion montages and women acting like shopping will heal all mental wounds in the span of time it takes to max out a credit card. First of all, if I maxed out a credit card, I'd flip out and beg the store to take my purchase back, not giggle at how silly I am to spend so much money. Second, I doubt a freelance article writer in NYC can afford to twirl around in dresses all day and spend $2000 in an afternoon."
#15
"Biggest cliché is that the vast majority of women sleep in their underwear and a tiny little top. Reality is we sleep in oversized T-shirts and that pair of leggings that have one too many rips/food stains on to wear in public."
#16
I hate when the "ugly" person gets a 15-minute makeover and is suddenly the best looking person in the film. As a genuinely hideous person it makes me furious because there's probably someone out there who legit thinks that if I just got a makeover my face suddenly wouldn't look like a bouquet of elbows.
#17
The geeky girls in high school movies who are supposed to be ugly are still really good looking.
#18
85 pound women in badass jobs like assassins or secret agents or super heroes. You need more muscle for these big fights you win.
You might also like: “Makes Me Physically Cringe”: 22 People List Beauty Standards That Need To Retire
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