Guest Post: Geena Davis Speaks Out About Girls In The Media
We’re thrilled to have a guest post from Ms. Twixt, an expert on all things tween. She attended an event about how girls and women are portrayed in the media, and the facts are surprising and, frankly, a little depressing, considering the impression girls get of their own worth from an early age. True, there are a few examples of “girl power” movies and TV shows that get it right, but they’re the minority. Ms. Twixt explains below…
To contact Ms. Twixt, email her at mstwixt @ gmail.com.
Guest Post: Geena Davis Speaks Out About Girls In The Media
Academy Award-winning actresss Geena Davis is famous for portraying strong (both physically and emotionally) women on screen. When she became a mom, however, she was struck by the utter dearth of positive, active, and central role models for girls in movies and on television. She founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in the Media (GDIGM) to conduct research on the issue and advocate for change in the industry. Georgetown University’s McDonogh Business School hosted an event on this topic, and we had the chance to ask Ms. Davis a few questions.
GDIGM did a comprehensive survey on the roles girls and women have in film and television. They looked at everything from the amount of screen time, how many girls and women are included in stories, their costumes, the number of lines they had, how they were or were not stereotyped, and more. The organization also looked at the number of women in professional positions in the industry — that is, those behind the cameras. The results of these studies, especially those on family programming, were disturbing:
- Women and girls account for less than a third of the characters in family films. Despite public perception that this has changed (oft-cited are films like “Mulan” and “Tangled,” and shows like “iCarly” and “Hannah Montana”), this figure is the same as it was in 1946. Surprised? We were too.
- Research shows that there is a direct correlation between more women working behind the camera and women having more screen time and accounting for a higher number of characters (even background characters). But the number of professionals in the industry who occupy the key roles of director, producer, and writer are going down.
- In G-rated films, 80.5% of all working characters are male, but in reality, women comprise 50% of the workforce. Why are we shown a 1950′s version of the world in 2011?
Why does this matter, especially to tween girls and their parents? Because:
- Even though females comprise 50% of the U.S. population, our daughters see that men outnumber women 3-to-1 on screen. Inexplicably, only 17% of group or crowd scenes are female. As Ms. Davis said yesterday, “So if we’re 51% of the population but only 17% of the crowd, where did we all go?”
- This research means that “family entertainment” isn’t the safe haven parents think it is. Female characters are hyper-sexualized, especially when animated, and are only present as eye-candy in the majority of shows. As Ms. Davis put it in one of our favorite quotes from the event, “The way they’re drawn, there’s no room for a spinal column.”
- “Coraline” is often held up as an example of a strong female lead role, but Hollywood weakened her. In the book from which the film is based, Coraline saves herself, but in the film, a boy character is added, and — surprise surprise — he saves her. Really??
- Other research GDIGM cites finds that girls who are exposed to more media have the feeling that they are fewer choices in life, and that, on average, the more media boys watch the more sexist their outlook.
GDIGM will update their research next in 2015. Let’s all hope that the results show improvement.
About Ms. Twixt
In real life MsTwixt leads the digital strategy group at a local consulting firm and, prior to the Great Recession, owned Twixt, DC’s “Best Kids Clothing Store” as voted by local parents. She writes under this pen name in a likely fruitless attempt to avoid further drama with her own tween daughters. She authors an active blog on tween lifestyle at www.MsTwixt.com, regularly invokes the wrath of mommy bloggers at Technorati, and occasionally contributes to YPulse.
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