So Nice To See Sexism Alive And Well

After taking yesterday off to trek miles and miles (10) away via transit and free shuttle bus to IKEA in Elizabeth, New Jersey, I was going to write a clever little blog entry about the ubiquitousness of Swedish furniture and household products, and the sheer delight in the prospect of not only a bed but a sofa for my furniture-deprived home. It was going to be great.

Instead, I'm going to comment on this: http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/warners-robinoff-gets-in-catfight-with-girls/

Please, go read that article. Open it in another tab. Then come back to this.

(In case you're just not tab-friendly, here's the sitch: basically Warner Bros. Big-wig Jeff Robinov has decided that because of the 'box office under-performance' of female-lead recent pictures The Invasion and The Brave One, he's done making movies with a female lead. Done. Forever. As in, 'Oh, sorry, you have boobs? Not going to have a lead in a WB picture. Ever.')

To tell you the truth, I don't even know where to start. Sure, sure, everyone knows Hollywood is where the boys play (hell, I'm even writing a novel about it) but let's get real--openly proclaiming such a blatantly, overtly, disgustingly sexist comment and not getting fired, like, yesterday?

My acting program started with 13 people: 11 women and 2 men. (By the time graduation rolled around three years later, we were 6 women and 1 man, but that, my friends, is another story. One with lots of blood, guts, tears and mayhem. Fun times!) The year before ours had something like 7 women in the graduating class and 0 men. This isn't Shakespeare's time any more, Mr. Rabinov. We don't dress little boys up in women's clothes. Women get to be politicians, doctors, CEOs. Maybe even Presidents of the United States. But not the leads in Warner Brother movies?

The acting world is already a joke for women. What do we have out there to be proud of? When we get started in the film/TV world we get several truly fabulous female-role-options:
1. Whore: this can take several forms IE: prostitute, drug-addicted prostitute, prostitute-with-a-child-to-feed...
2. Secretary: and I'm not talking Pam-on-The-Office here, either. I'm talking the one-liner woman who says, "Mr. Anderson, I've got Tom on the line."
3. Victim: yeah, just turn on your TV for ten minutes. You'll see her. She's probably dead. If she's lucky she got at least a line before she was offed.

Then, then when you get to be a really, really, really good actor you can get cast as:
1. Mother: she usually gets a few more lines
2. Token Female Lawyer: see also Token Female Cop or Token Female Doctor (not to be confused with the girls on Grey's Anatomy, though there is a fine line between Female Doctor and Whore these days...)
3. The Only Woman Who Gets Any Lines In A Major Hollywood Film Unless Apparently That Film Is Made By Warner Brothers.

And as a side note: why, why, why do women always have to get naked before men do? Sure, maybe Kate Winslet doesn't mind running around in the buff (she says she doesn't mind, anyway) but why does a budding actress always have to wrestle with the nudity clause issue? Constantly wondering whether she'll ever be able to make it if she sticks to her guns and, well, keeps her boobs under wraps? Men get all the best roles and they get to keep their clothes on. (They also get to be less physically attractive, and they're allowed to get fatter, more wrinkly and have less hair--on top--than women. Awesome. I love this new age of equality we live in.)

I mean, women make up at least (most figures say more than) half of the human population, and here we are, relegated to antiquated Madonna/Whore roles, scrabbling for a part that has at least enough lines to qualify us for more than just 'supporting' status, and an entire studio says, "Nahhh. Not gonna happen."

Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for setting women back in their place. We were starting to get so ... so uppity, what with wanting screen time and equality and, God help us, more than one of us cast in any given movie. I was so confused. I'm glad I know exactly where we stand, as far as WB is concerned.

But hey, while you're at it? Maybe we shouldn't be pointing fingers at Jodie Foster and Nicole Kidman. You ever think, just maybe, someone else might have a share of the blame? Like, say, the people who wrote the godawful scripts, or even worse: the jackasses who green-lit those scripts? Two words, asshole: KANGAROO JACK.

Oh, right. I'm just a woman. You don't have to listen to a single damn thing I say. But you know what? I can write about it, and I can boycott your films. Thanks for playing.