Now playing: sexism in Hollywood.
Producer Ross Putman, who wrote and produced the 2012 crime drama “Trigger Finger,” has pored through so many scripts touting female leads as “sexy,” “adorable” and “smokin’ hot,” he created a Twitter account to spotlight the misogynistic trend.
The account @femscriptintros, started earlier this week, showcases 20 fawning character descriptions that prize feminine beauty over substance.
“A gorgeous woman, JANE, 23, is a little tipsy, dancing naked on her big bed, as adorable as she is sexy,” reads one.
“JANE pours her gorgeous figure into a tight dress, slips into her
stiletto-heeled f--k-me shoes, and checks herself in the dresser
mirror,” says another.
One was downright poetic in its objectification.
“Like draping the Venus De Milo in a burlap dress, Jane’s sensational
natural beauty fights through her plain blue Ann Taylor outfit.”
The patterns that emerged in script after script were “pretty disconcerting,” Putman told Jezebel.
“For every confused ‘you’re’ and ‘your,’ there’s just as much latent misogyny and sexism in the scripts I read,” he said.
“There’s a standard of beauty to which you know these writers are referring. The suggestion is that women are only valuable if they’re ‘beautiful.’ It’s not always true, but it’s an underlying current.”
Putman changed characters’ names to JANE to protect writers’ identities
— but he also hoped that sameness would play up the “simplistic”
treatment of female roles across the board.
JANE, a 19 year old Bunny girl - honey-blonde farmland beauty queen.— Ross Putman (@femscriptintros) February 10, 2016
JANE, 28, athletic but sexy. A natural beauty. Most days she wears jeans, and she makes them look good.— Ross Putman (@femscriptintros) February 10, 2016
“Jane is described in all these ways, because Jane has no control over
her role in this world — which is far too often to be solely an object
of desire, motivating the male characters that actually have agency in
the script,” he said.
The motivation behind Putman’s project echoes a now-deafening call within Hollywood itself to write meatier roles for women.
“Go to the movies — how many good scripts are you really seeing out there?” Julia Louis-Dreyfus told Elle magazine in a recent interview. “Not tons of them.”
The account also comes amid outrage over this year’s all-white batch of Oscar nominees, coupled with a largely testosterone-fueled roster of best film picks.
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