Women Inequality in Films

On November 23, Los Angeles Times, science has confirmed that women were underrepresented in movies. Cinema tendencies diminish and drift, but one facet of Hollywood moviemaking proving remarkably consistent was gender inequality, according to a study being released Monday by USC's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

In a survey of the top 100-grossing movies of 2009, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" and "The Twilight Saga: New Moon", researchers found that 32.8% of the 4,342 speaking characters were female and 67.2% were male, a percentage identical to that of the top-grossing movies of 2008.

"We see remarkably stable trends," said USC Annenberg associate professor Stacy L. Smith. "This reveals an industry formula for gender that may be outside of people's conscious awareness."

It was not just the ratio of female to male characters that continued to be imbalanced but the manner in which they're depicted, according to Smith.

The USC study determined that women were still far more likely than men to wear sexy clothing in movies, such as swimwear and unbuttoned shirts (25.8% versus 4.7%), to expose skin (23% versus 7.4%) and to be described by another character as attractive (10.9% versus 2.5%).

Revealing clothing and partial nudity was just as prevalent among 13- to 20-year-old female characters as it was among those 21 to 29, suggesting that females were sexualized on-screen at young ages, Smith said.

Behind the camera, the gender inequality was just as dramatic: only 3.6% of the directors and 13.5% of the writers on the top-grossing films of 2009 were female, according to the study.

Researchers found that the sex of the storytellers had a significant effect on what appeared on-screen. In movies directed by women, 47.7% of the characters were female; in movies directed by men, less than a third of the characters were female. When one or more of the screenwriters was female, 40% of characters were female; when all the screenwriters were male, 29.8% of the characters were female.

"Some of this is a function of the fact that we see more males working behind the scenes than females, and they're telling the stories that they know," Smith said. "If the numbers behind the scenes move, we're likely to see numbers on-screen move."

There was one area where women surpassed men in films in 2009 — they bought more than 50% of the movie tickets sold in the U.S., according to the Motion Picture Assn. of America.

"Females represent half of the population and half of movie going audiences, but they don't hit a third of the characters," Smith said. "Male consumers aren't the only ones going to the movies, but our cultural storytellers today are male. The problem is really thinking about the perpetuation of the status quo."

My thought about this gender inequality in films was that men still hold more power in business than women in modern time. Recalling what kind of movies that I have watched with women as the main characters, I realized that majority of films with female protagonists were about romance. And for some reason, when two or more guys fell in love with the heroine, the male roles would get more attentions from the audience than the main female character. Although large numbers of movies featured women, they were mainly portrayed as damsel in distress or just the love interest of the male hero. Women in the film industry just weren’t shown as some strong individual, maybe our society’s value on female reminded the same; look pretty, inferior to men, and be good house-makers.

Fat or Curvy?

On November 15, 2011, Miley Cyrus claimed that she was at war with the critics who said her curves were fat.

After Miley, 18, found out her more womanly figure was the subject of some bad weight jokes and unflattering videos on YouTube, she lashed out on Twitter.

Miley tweeted her more than three million followers, “By calling girls like me fat this is what you're doing to other people.” She also posted a picture of an emaciated woman along with her tweet. Miley went on to criticize her critics, she wrote, “I love MYSELF & if you could say the same you wouldn't be sitting on your computer trying to hurt others."

To make her point, Miley posted a picture of Marilyn Monroe with the caption, "Proof that you can be adored by thousands of men, even when your thighs touch."

Lovato had to defend her post-rehab weight gain back in August. At the time Lovato tweeted, “Guess what, I'm healthy and happy, and if you're hating on my weight you obviously aren't.”

Finally! More celebrities who do not care about what the public said about their weight! Seriously, people need to stop telling others that just because they were not size zero or born with slim figure that they were overweighed. And it was natural for women to have their body grow larger as they age. Being healthy inside and out were much more important and attractive. Beside, who said being skeletally thin was beautiful? Having a curvy body not only show off one’s sexiness, but also draw a lot of attention from the guys!

For the Sake of Beauty

On November 9, 2011, 30-year-old Victoria's Secret Angel model Alessandra Ambrosio wore one 30-pound pair of gold wings on the run-way.

"It's really heavy," Ambrosio said after a team of four unharnessed her. "When I first put it on, I almost fell back, that's how heavy it was. You really have to put a lot of strength toward your shoulders to be able to hold that. But it's incredible. You can't say no to an outfit like that. Those wings are unbelievable."

Besides heft, the wings boast bling in the form of more than 100,000 Swarovski crystals. Victoria's Secret Fashion Show producer Monica Mitro called them "the most spectacular wings we've ever done."

"She was struggling to walk in them but she was like, 'If it looks good, if I look good, I'm wearing it,'" Mitro said. "She's in her underwear, she's wearing high heels, it's a bit of a precarious runway. So you really have to want something badly to wear something that heavy on national television."

"I never work out my back, I never work out my arms," Ambrosio said. "But I guess this week I'm going to have to lift some weights to be able to wear those wings on the runway."

It was no doubt that a job such as modeling can be difficult, but having the models wearing something so heavy just for the sake for selling the designers’ products was too extreme! Since these models were probably underweighted, they do not have the strength to carry these heavyweight materials, worst of all they even might get smashed! Sometime it would be better if the designers designed their merchandise in a more reasonable weight so that the people who were trying to sell them can actually advertising instead of suffering!

Marriage Problem

On November 2, 2011, Kim Kardashian's mother claimed that her daughter obtained nothing from her $10 million wedding.

“Kim definitely made money from the pictures,” Kris Jenner said on ABC’s “The View” today, referring to wedding photos Kardashian and her separated husband Kris Humphries sold to People magazine for a reported $2.5 million. “We all got our shooting fees from doing the show [but] when it was all said and done Kim had to pay a lot of money.” Jenner said that Kardashian placed her own money into making “her fairy tale dream come true.”

Jenner, who was on “The View” to promote her new memoir, said that her daughter “felt like she married for love.” Jenner said she doesn’t know why Kardashian marched for divorce. “She said ‘Mommy, this is what I feel I need to do. Please trust me,’” Jenner said, adding that Kardashian came to the decision “with a lot of prayer and a lot of meditation.”

“It’s a tough time for the family and for Kim and for everybody involved,” Jenner said, choking up. “It’s really hard to go through this on a public stage.”

“I do, you know, want to make clear that I would never marry for a TV show, for money, for anything like that,” Kardashian said on an Australian radio show.

Kardashian has repeatedly scolded reports that she caused her wedding for a payday,writing on her blog saying that she was “donating the money for all the gifts to the Dream Foundation.” The Dream Foundation confirmed to ABCNews.com that Kardashian has reached out to make a donation.

Besides the stated $2.5 million she got from People, Kardashian is said to have made between $12 and $15 million for the E! TV special about her nuptials. She also reportedly banked hundreds of thousands of dollars for selling exclusive rights to her engagement announcement, bridal shower and bachelorette party.

On October 31, the day Kardashian filed for divorce from Humphries after 72 days of marriage, the New York Times calculated that the couple made $10,358.80 per hour of marriage, or $5,179.40 each if split evenly.

My thought of this news was that why do celebrities tend to have poor marriage? This was not the first time a famous person whose nuptial lasted fewer than a year, but this sort of things have been going around more frequently these years. What worried me was that the young audience might get affect by these young married stars and cause the divorce rate to increase! Even though Kardashian’s divorce was her own decision, but the public can easily mistake her action as a woman who dumped her man for work. Therefore, I believe, if a woman celebrity want to get marry she have to think about the future whether she have the ability maintain her job and her role as a housewife or not!