Outrage over Hollywood's gender gap seems to have reached a peak over the past year, from the ACLU investigating the way female directors can't get hired, to Jennifer Lawrence's essay on inequality, to Gillian Andersonrevealing that David Duchovny was offered double her pay for the new X-Files episodes.
This week there's a new voice chiming in, film producer Ross Putman, who started a Twitter account dedicated to nothing but the sexist intros given to female characters in the many scripts he reads. He says the only thing he changes are the names to "JANE."
Keep in mind, these tweets are the intros. In each one of these cases, this is the way the character is being introduced. This is the first—and therefore most important—impression the screenwriter wants you to get of who this character is.
Here's 'a sampling:
BUT?? Because most athletic women are gross slabs of muscle?
Gotta let someone else handle this one.
Because how could any woman who cares about her appearance have any time left over after gym, tan, surgery to be a "professional."
Is Jane a horse or an arid climate?
Gorgeous, tipsy, adorable andnaked? This guy was going for it.
So many poorly chosen words.
As far as these serve as a barometer of where screenwriters are at these days in terms of objectifying women and writing roles worthy of multifaceted actresses, let's file this one under laugh to keep from crying.
There's a whole lot more of them at @femscriptintros.
