There is one thing I really like about the A. O. Scott piece in The New York Times “Hollywood’s Year of Heroine Worship.”

This photograph by Tierney Gearon :

The New York Times chief film critic is living in an entirely different universe than my three daughters and me, or he has the lowest expectations imaginable.

Scott writes:

There is a smattering of evidence to support the impression that they have, because 2012 was, all in all, a pretty good year for movies and also a pretty good year for female heroism.

Huh?

Here’s a recap of Reel Girl’s Gallery of Girl’s Gone Missing From Children’s Movies in 2012 posted just yesterday:

Yes, we got “Brave” this year. Thank you director Brenda Chapman for making Pixar’s first movie ever with a female protagonist. I’m sorry that you, one of the only women to direct animated movies produced by a major studio, were fired half way through production and replaced with a male director.

But “Brave” is just one movie. The exception proves the rule. It’s December now, and sadly, it’s time for me to admit that once again, in the movies made for children in 2012, girls go missing. In staggering proportions, males are consistently front and center; females are mostly sidelined or not there at all.

If you look at the gender placement in the images on the movie posters below, the meaning of “marginalized” couldn’t be more clear. Remember, these are movie for kids. So when your children go to the movies, they are learning, time and time again, that boys are more important than girls…

Only 16% of protagonists in movies are female; only 16% of women make it into power positions in almost all professions across America. Children’s movie posters, and of course the movies themselves, are an effective way that we acclimate a new generation to expect and accept a world where females go missing.

Out of the 16 posters for children’s movies in 2012 pictured below, just 4 represent movies starring females: “Mirror, Mirror,” “Brave,” “Secret World of Arrietty” and “Big Miracle.”

Here’s the Gallery:

 

This Gallery is about the last thing I would want to tell my three daughters– ages 3, 6, and 9– that this is what  year of heroine worship looks like.

Go to the full post of Reel Girl’s Gallery of Girls Gone Missing From Movies for Children in 2012