Why Girls Should Major in Anything Film

By Chase Pattison on August 2, 2012

I recently read “Cinderella Ate My Daughter” by critically acclaimed and New York Times best-selling author, Peggy Orenstein. Orenstein writes about women’s issues and raising daughters in a culture and society where women are constantly sexualized, judged more on their cover than content and are discriminated against by men and by other women.

Throughout the book, she brings up alarming statistics and talks about what these mean as a women, and as a mother trying to raise her daughter appropriately in our society.

Almost everything she talked about in the book made me absolutely furious. I thought that if it made me fume, if other women knew about them, they would be furious too. But, being mad doesn’t actually do anything useful. So, I decided to pick a topic that college women could possibly change. According to Orenstein, all we have to do is major in anything film.

Here are some of the reasons:

- Across the 400 top-grossing G, PG, PG-13 and R rated movies released between 1990 and 2006, only 27 percent of all speaking characters were female (1)
- There hasn’t been much improvement since: out of 5,554 speaking characters in G, PG and PG-13 movies released between 2006 and 2009, only 29 percent were female (2)
- In 2007, only 20 of the top 100 grossing movies featured a female lead or co-lead. (3)
- In 2008, almost 40 percent of female characters in movies ages 13-20 were depicted wearing sexually-revealing clothing (6.7 percent of males); 30.1 percent appeared partially nude (10.3 percent of males); 35.1 percent had tiny waists (13.6 percent of males); and 29.2 percent were overtly attractive (11.1 percent of males) (4)
- The percentage of females in G-rated movies wearing skimpy outfits wasn’t much lower than those in R-rated movies – 20.3 percent and 23.5 percent (Smith, S.L., and cook, C.A. (2208). Op.cit.).
- Girls in G-rated movies were, alarmingly, more likely to be depicted with unrealistically tiny waists or bodies than their R-rated counterparts (6)
- Extreme makeovers were a key plot device for a third of female protagonists among 13 G-rated movies released between 1937 and 2005. Two-thirds of heroines in those same films were in some way put on display for their beauty (or lack thereof). Three quarters wore sexy outfits. Over half of animated heroines had improbable physical proportions…yes, even computer animated or hand-drawn girls are expected to be ridiculously thin, big bosomed, and have peachy rears that their paper-thin waists couldn’t hold up in real life. (7)

Here are some of the IMMEDIATE changes we could start to do and see if more women major in film:

-Films directed or produced by women tend to feature a greater number of girls and women on screen – if one or more women is involved in writing the script, the percentage of female characters jumps 14.3 percent! (8)
- Still, among the 100 top-grossing films of 2008, only 8 percent were directed by at least one woman, 13.6 percent were written by women and 19.1 percent were produced by at least one woman. (9)

Why most women might not even consider studying film…or pursuing any career:

- Among G-rated films released between 2006 and 2009 over 80 percent of characters depicted as having jobs were male.
- Out of these same films, not a single woman was portrayed as an executive, a doctor, a lawyer, or a politician.
- Among the 101 most popular G-rated films released between 1990 and 2005 there was a close tie between the most common jobs held by female characters: 19 percent were white-collar occupations, 16.2 percent were entertainers and 15.2 percent were royalty (princesses or queens). (10)

As a psychology student and children’s activist, I know that a lot of our personality, self-esteem, confidence and a plethora of other traits we have as adults are molded and shaped by what we learn and experience as children. So, what infuriated me the most was that most of these unacceptable statistics had to do with children’s films! If little girls and boys see these films, and are by theory, taught about gender roles through them, than there really is is a big problem with how they will grow up and what they will think of themselves as girls, young women and adult women.

In a perfect world, I would like to see not only men treat and portray women as the powerful, incredible humans we are, but I would love to have women treat each other and themselves as such.

Maybe, as college students, the first step we can take toward this goal is to major in film to change what little girls, our future daughters and granddaughters, see and learn from the big screen.

Note: All sources for statistics linked at the end of each. Number 10 accounts for all three bullet points in that section. Link to “Cinderella Ate My Daughter” in text.