Author Archives: margotmagowan

Hollywood, what’s the difference between drawing male and female characters?

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Since Lino DaSilvo’s sexist comments about how female characters are hard to draw because they’ve got to be pretty, he’s had many defenders comment on how much this artist cares about his movies and characters.

No one is saying DaSilvo doesn’t care about his art. No one is even saying that “Frozen” isn’t a good movie. “Ratatouille” is a great movie, and it also follows the same sexist pattern of most children’s movies where females can’t be heroes. Unfortunately, this sexism is entrenched in our culture, the stories we tell, and the heroes we create. Abnoba makes a great comment about all this on Reel Girl:

And female characters are even more difficult to differentiate because, as he says, they have to be pretty. And pretty, for Disney and other companies, has a very narrow definition. I think that we all know how Disney tried to change Merida. Disney is not only selling a movie. The Disney princess are used to sell clothes, toys, party supplies, make up…and that’s not based in how adventurous or smart they are, their beauty is a big selling point…Maybe Lino DiSalvo is not sexist, maybe he is just too frank for his own good about what that industry require from him, but I think that the comment is pointing to a very big problem in the female representation of women in animation.

 

You can be frank and sexist at the same time. As I blogged, I don’t think DaSilvo intended to be sexist. He thought he was stating a fact. And he actually is, but the fact is not about real differences between females and males, but about how they are represented in narratives for children in 2013.

Here’s something I wrote a while ago on the differences between drawing females and males:

Whenever  I blog about the exaggerated breasts or ass of a female cartoon character, commenters respond that I have nothing to complain about: all cartoons are caricatures.

There’s a difference between exaggerating muscles and exaggerating someone’s butt. Here’s artist Kevin Bolk’s take on “The Avengers.”

avengers

Of course, “The Avengers” model, with its pathetic 5: 1 male/ female ratio and then sexualizing that lone female, is not unique to that group of superheroes.

Check out the Justice League cover. Notice any similarity?

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Here’s the artist Coelasquid’s “If Superheroes Posed Like Wonder Woman.”

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I love Coelasquid’s art because it shows so clearly that it’s not only the clothes put on female characters but the poses they are in.

Though of course, the clothes don’t help much. Here’s Theamat’s “If I Don’t Get Pants, Nobody Gets Pants:”

wonderwoman3

Wonder Woman with no pants was created by (and for?) grown-ups but it leads to Wonder Woman with no pants showing up as a LEGO minifig.

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Females are half of the population, yet because they are presented as a sexualized minority in so many movies for adults, they are also presented as a sexualized minority in movies for kids. Those roles are then replicated in kids’ toys and most tragically, in kids’ imaginary play.

Female characters account for only 16% of all characters in movies for kids.

Here’s an interesting coincidence: across the board in all professions, women at the top don’t make it past 16%.

Do you think limiting females in the imaginary world limits them in real life? Unfortunately, your kids do.

Sexist comment from animator of ‘Frozen’ typical of industry that limits females

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The sexist comment by Lino DiSalvo, head animator of “Frozen” is going around the web. Here’s what he said:

Historically speaking, animating female characters are really, really difficult, ’cause they have to go through these range of emotions, but they’re very, very — you have to keep them pretty and they’re very sensitive to — you can get them off a model very quickly. So, having a film with two hero female characters was really tough, and having them both in the scene and look very different if they’re echoing the same expression; that Elsa looking angry looks different from Anna (Kristen Bell) being angry.

DiSalvo’s comment was made as part of a larger interview. It’s pretty clear the animator wasn’t aware he was being offensive. How could he be so clueless? Because DiSalvo’s belief, that males come in all shapes and sizes, whereas females come in one, is so common, most people think it’s a fact.

Here is Christopher Hart teaching the differences on drawing male and female characters via Escher Girls.

With male comic characters, you can mold their bodies into many different shapes, producing a wide range of cool characters. It’s not so easy with women. Women in comics are, by and large, attractive—even the villains. Especially the villains! The Voluptuous Vixen and the Villainess are much more attractive in cutting-edge comics. So, you have less latitude in altering the body. You can’t draw brutish women or you’ll lose the attractiveness. Therefore, the changes rely less on the body types and more on the pose, costume and attitude.

 

menbodyshapes

femalebodyshapes

Here’s another how-to video from Marc Crilley. This video is great because Crilley takes you through the steps of just how artists are trained distort female anatomy. First, Crilley draws a regularly proportioned teenage girl. Then, he demonstrates the typical pattern and process of how artists exaggerate her proportions, drawing three well-known, female animated characters.

Crilley narrates:

It’s troubling, really in a way that artists, maybe many of them male, have this way of reducing the width of the female waist when they’re drawing it to just ridiculously small proportions and you know, you do sort of fear that this contributes to women’s body image, this crazy idea of the super narrow waist, but nevertheless you see it again and again. Finally, the big difference here, the knees, the line of the knees, much, much higher than in real life. So what’s interesting is you see that the whole area of the waist is being raised up here so as to create these incredibly long legs as an exaggerated style. To me, its sort of like Barbie doll style legs…

Here’s the video.

While watching Crilley’s video, I was thinking about the incredible influence of the artist to create reality. When you combine images with narratives, it can be so powerful, like being God. Not to mention repeating and repeating the same sequence to the growing brains of little kids, which is what happens when we all see the same old, same old look in animation. (By the way, another criticism I’ve read of “Frozen” is that the female character looks similar to Rapunzel of “Tangled.”)

On my Facebook feed today, Miss Representation posts on photographer and mom Ashlee Wells Jackson showing what women look like:

“Photographer and mom Ashlee Wells Jackson wants all of us to recognize and appreciate how childbirth, breastfeeding, and motherhood change women’s bodies. I’d love for both my daughter and my son to grow up seeing these images instead of the ones of ‘perfection’ they currently see every time we go to the grocery store.” – Laura Willard, Upworthy

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Willard’s photo essay reminds me of the Christopher Hart’s lesson on how to draw men. Guess what, everyone? Females, just like males, come in all shapes and sizes. Females, just like males, are complex creatures with all kinds of hopes and dreams and drives and emotions. Can we please see that on the big screen? Can our children see it?

It’s amusing in a sad way that DiSalvo is so flummoxed by how to make two angry females look different. I wonder if he’s as troubled by making angry females act differently as well. There are so many ways to express and show anger: clam up, punch a wall, flush red, scowl, yell, tear out hair, groan.

The problem here isn’t just that females are supposed to look pretty all the time, but also, that what is considered “pretty” is so cookie-cutter and limited. For a male character, the act of rescuing someone or being heroic makes him attractive. For a female character, being attractive is usually limited to how she looks– her hair, smile, and body.

As I wrote in my last post on “Frozen,” I know I’m supposed to be grateful there’s a movie for children that comes close to centering on a female hero. I actually am. As I blogged, most likely I’ll see it and I’ll take my three daughters because my options are so limited. But I’m pissed that my options, not to mention my children’s options, are this limited. This is the fantasy world, for goodness sake, a place where anything should be possible, so why is the imaginary world so sexist?

See Reel Girl’s Gallery of Girls Gone Missing From Children’s Movies in 2013

Disney diminishes a heroine in 4 easy steps

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Ever heard of The Snow Queen? It’s a famous fairytale about a girl who rescues her brother from the powerful Snow Queen. Let’s see how Disney diminishes female power in 4 easy steps.

(1) Change the title. Once called “The Snow Queen,” the movie is now called “Frozen.” Using the same tactic as when Disney switched the title of “Rapunzel” to “Tangled” to hide the female star, it’s become extremely rare for a female to be referenced in the title of an animated movie for children.

(2) Change the story In the original story, the girl rescues her brother. Now, she rescues her sister, keeping the trope of a damsel in distress and preventing a girl from saving a boy.

(3) Create a male co-star Just as Flynn Ryder’s role was expanded to equal Rapunzel’s in “Tangled,” Disney invented Kristoff, a mountain man, to share the screen with the heroine.

(4) Don’t let females dominate posters or previews The first preview has no Snow Queen and no females at all. Its a funny bit between two male characters.

The early poster, tellingly, is a shadow of a female figure who you can barely see.

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You know what really creeps me out? Thousands of years ago, conquering armies smashed the idols of their victims and stole their stories, an extremely effective tactic to destroy a community and steal its power. Christians did this to pagans, but of course, this act is all over history. Just like the goddess morphed into the Virgin, girls are going missing under the guise of celebration. Right now, in 2013, Disney is stealing and sanitizing stories. It’s an annihilation. How long before we all forget the original story? Will our children ever hear it?

When I blogged about the sexist comments made by the head animator of “Frozen”– that female characters need to be pretty, and it’s hard to make two angry ones look different from each other– Nebbie comments:

Two female hero characters is not difficult, it’s only difficult if you’re using one basic type of female character.

They also could’ve made the sidekick reindeer, Sven female instead of male. Making the reindeer character female could bring in another type of female character in the movie. Most sidekick characters in Disney Princess movies, and other Disney movies for that matter, are male and having a female sidekick character would be change of pace for the company. The female characters who aren’t villains don’t all have to be pretty, sensitive, or passive.

Making the reindeer female would also make for an interesting female animal character. Human female characters are lacking in fictional media, but female animal characters are even more lacking in fictional media.

Making the reindeer female would also make him more accurate to the species because male reindeer begin to grow antlers in February and shed their antlers in November whereas female reindeer begin to grow antlers in May and keep their antlers until they shed them next May. The movie takes place in the winter months, so Sven should’ve been female.

The sidekick snowman, Olaf could’ve also been female-gendered. In other words, there would be a “snowoman” or “snowlady” instead.

 

Think Nebbie is off her rocker for suggesting so many female characters in “Frozen?” Look what Feminist Fangirl writes about the original story:

 

There is the Snow Queen herself, a formidable villain who’s power is treated with respect. There is Kai’s grandmother, who provides an essential catalyst to Gerda’s journey. There is the old witch woman with the enchanted garden who functions as a threshold guardian for Gerda while being characterized in a respectful manner that serves as a good subversion of the old witch trope. There is a female crow who knows how to sneak into palaces, a helpful princess who heads a side plot in which she will only marry a prince as intelligent as her (!!!), a robber and her daughter, head of a band of robbers who kidnap Gerda. The daughter is a spunky, knife wielding girl who befriends Gerda and aids her on her way. And finally, there are two women, the latter of whom helps Gerda understand the inherent power she has always had within her, a power that will ultimately save her friend, and the world.

 

I got that link from Fem it Up! who, like Feminist Fangirl, is boycotting the movie. I will most likely see “Frozen” as I want to know, first hand, exactly what happens to this story. Also, you know what really sucks? I have 3 young daughters, and this movie probably shows more of a heroine than most of the rest in 2013. If you doubt me, check out Reel Girl’s Gallery of Girls Gone Missing From Children’s Movies in 2013. Which is why, I suppose, Disney believes we all have nothing to complain and ought to be happy with these crumbs of feminism for our kids.

 

Another Fifth Grade tradition cancelled due to shutdown

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I am so mad at this idiotic government. What are we supposed to tell our kids about conflict-resolution? Seriously. What a load of hypocrites grown-ups are.

Last week, my Fifth grade daughter’s overnight trip on the Balclutha ship, that she’s been looking forward to for years, was cancelled. Today, I found out the annual sandcastle event, where all the Fifth graders in San Francisco get together on the beach for a massive sand-castle building competition, has been cancelled. That’s two landmark events of Fifth grade, not happening. My daughter’s experience of this year is dramatically altered because of this shutdown. And of course, what’s happening to her is echoed all around the country in ways much more serious and horrible.

It is amazing to me that people can be so selfish and hurt this country and its citizens in a multitude of ways all to disobey a law that is already in place. I’m speechless.

Animator of “Frozen” says female characters must be pretty and sensitive

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From The MarySue:

When I saw this quote circulating around Tumblr last night I assumed it was made up. Did Lino DiSalvo, Frozen‘s head of animation, really say that animating female characters is difficult because they’re so “sensitive” and “you have to keep them pretty”? Unlike male characters, who are far, far more stoic than we emotional womenfolk, amirite? But no. It appears that this is a legit thing that he actually said.

Here’s the quote:

Historically speaking, animating female characters are really, really difficult, ’cause they have to go through these range of emotions, but they’re very, very — you have to keep them pretty and they’re very sensitive to — you can get them off a model very quickly. So, having a film with two hero female characters was really tough, and having them both in the scene and look very different if they’re echoing the same expression; that Elsa looking angry looks different from Anna (Kristen Bell) being angry.

 

I’m going to throw up. There you have it, the whole reason for the Minority Feisty. There’s basically one type of girl. What can you possibly do with 2, or 3, or 4, or more in a story? How can they all be different? A girl is a girl is a girl, right?

When storytellers challenge the dominance of the Minority Feisty, they will be forced to challenge the sexism and stereotypes that support allowing just one female character– or a tiny minority of them– in a story as well i.e. “Don’t all angry females look the same?” This is why, obviously, the Minority Feisty trope is so pernicious and has stuck around for so long. Change her, change everything.

It’s disturbing that DiSalvo’s sexist mindset is typical of those who have the massive power to create and distribute stories to a new generation of children. A mindset, by the way, that has been dictating stories, and who and what heroes are, through history, art, religion, and politics, for thousands of years.

Who’s ready for a new story? I sure am.

‘Gravity’ director chose female lead to ‘strip it from heroists’

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All I’d heard about acclaimed director Alfonso Cuaron’s new movie “Gravity” were glowing reviews until someone posted Beyond the Trailer’s review on Reel Girl’s Facebook page. Disgusted with Sandra Bullock’s screaming, hysterical, and annoying character, Beyond the Trailer refers to a recent interview where Cuaron says he chose a female lead for the movie in order to “strip it from heroists.” Beyond the Trailer says:

Are Caron and his son saying women can’t be seen as heroes? Tell that to the women who helped forge our clandestine services as spies during World War 1 and World War 2 or the Air Force’s current 60 female fighter pilots. Or how about Victoria Lee Soto and Anne Marie Murphy, teachers who used themselves as human shields between Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza and their students and were fatally shot.

Of course, that list doesn’t even begin to cover all the female heroes. While Beyond the Trailer says “heroist” means “people who admire heroes,” I’d never heard the word, so I looked it up. I can’t find a definition. The interview where Cuaron uses the word also refers to his native Spanish and thick accent. Did he make the word up? Is it a Spanish word? Was it misheard? Do you know the word? Though I can’t find a definition, from the context, I can’t see what else Cuaron would mean besides, as Beyond the Trailer says, that he made a movie with a female lead because he wanted to make a movie without a hero. I, too, feel disgusted and appalled.

Here’s Beyond the Trailer’s review:

Update: After I blogged, I Tweeted Melissa Silverstein of Women and Hollywood, which is one of my favorite blogs, to get her thoughts. She Tweeted back:

maybe he meant that he wanted to make it different from the typical conversations of heroes and throw a wrench in it…I respectfully disagree and feel she was a huge hero.

 

Silverstein’s first column for Forbes “Gravity– a Step Forward For Women On Screen” came out a few hours later.

Gravity is important because it is a movie that will be a part of the Oscar conversation for the duration and that means we will be talking about a female astronaut who has to basically overcome every adversity you could imagine to survive… Even the films about men that are not even a part of the Oscar conversations are about male heroes — albeit superheroes — but this film takes a woman, a scientist, an incredibly smart woman who needs to figure out how to save herself.  Not a typical Hollywood movie to say the least.  It’s a film about competence, about training, about science and resiliency and, yes, Sandra Bullock is a hero, and she’s a hero who actually flies in space.

That sounds great, but I still question what Cuaron meant in his statement. Cab posted a link defining “heroist” from urbandictionary.com

1. One who worships heroes and wants to become one

2. Someone that creates or nurtures heroes Alfred Pennyworth was a heroist to Batman

 

From this definition, heroist doesn’t sound negative, as in someone obsessed with conventional ideas of a what a hero is. Alfred Pennyworth is a noble character. So, I still don’t get it. As far as the comments who describe the screaming reaction fits in with the story, I agree with Cat who comments here:

It isn’t gender neutral for the female character to be hysterical and incompetent while the male character is calmly trying to keep her focused and give her instructions…The issue isn’t that this film depicts one hysterical female character. The issue is that it reinforces a negative pattern and though they could have reversed the genders, they didn’t.

 

 

My daughter writes Boehner about shutdown and her cancelled field trip

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Office of the Speaker

The Speaker of the House of Representatives

John Boehner

United States Capitol

Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Mr. Speaker,

Today, I had a field trip to the Balclutha, but sadly the park was closed because of the government shutdown. My teachers scheduled the trip a year ago, and it is a very popular trip, so we’re probably not going to be able to reschedule. I feel disappointed because my whole class was really looking forward to it. We were going to get to cook food on the boat and stay overnight. We were all going to have jobs on the ship and get to go out in boat which would have been really fun, so I hope we can reschedule. Do you think there’s a way we can make that happen? We all feel so sad we couldn’t go, because today just happened to be a bad day.

The Democrats think everyone should have health care which is good. But the Republicans also have a point. We don’t want to lose all of our money. But I don’t think we would. If Americans are healthy, that is good for the country.

So many people who are hired by the government have lost their jobs today. I hope that the Republicans and Democrats and all the other people in the government come to a compromise soon so people can ask get their jobs back and everything can go back to normal. I hope we can go on our field trip to the Balclutha.

Sincerely,

Lucy, 5th Grader

Parents of little kids tell stories about gender stereotyping and bullying

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Here are some more stories from parents of little kids to Reel Girl about gender stereotyping and bullying.

From Isaac:

My 5 year old daughter and I were reading a comic book which had an ad for Avengers shoes. She excitedly pointed them out.

 

I asked her if she would want to wear Avengers shoes. She said yes, and then she paused for a second before adding that her friends would say that they were boy shoes. I asked her how she felt about that, and she said that she would tell them that clothes are for everyone.

 

It’s so messed up that she’s aware that wearing something she thinks is cool is… a political act. It doesn’t faze her but she knows it’s screwed up.

 

From soymilk:

We first ran into gender conformity when our 3 1/2 year old son went to kindy, and was told his purple hat was a girl’s hat. He was confused and we had a talk about it and he told the offending child the next day that it was his hat and he was a boy so it’s a boy’s hat.
In school he’s faced being called a girl for choosing to have a butterfly painted on his face on fair day (instead of a spider or something scary like the other boys). He’s recently (at the age of 8) started getting into painting his nails, so he had to deal with being told that he was a girl for doing it. But he stuck with it, with support from home and understanding teachers, and now everyone in his class enjoys seeing what colour his nails are this week, and he has boys telling him that they think it’s silly to say some things are for girls and not boys.

 

From Elizabeth:

My daughter had a similar experience with being teased for wearing “boys” shoes and even though she *gets* why it is happening, it still hurt and made her more wary of her choices. This stuff is so limiting, and I get beyond frustrated when people say it doesn’t matter. It matters a lot.

 

From Anne:

I’ve been reading Ramona the Pest to my 5yo and it sparked a great conversation about this the other night. Ramona gets very upset that she has to wear brown ” boy” rainboots instead of the red or white boots the girls wear. My son was very puzzled and troubled about why red boots were ” girl ” boots. We talked about how silly and arbitrary these distinctions are. He said he still didn’t wan t to wear pink to school, but he did say he liked pink.

From Maritsa:

A 10-year old son of my friend war wearing his fuchsia shorts all summer long and loved it. But, in September, he refused to wear it at school arguing the other boys would laugh at him…

 

This is so sad and the thing is, my 4 yr old daughter is not a huge Star Wars fan. She could go either way with her shoes, pink and princessy or ‘boy’ shoes. It’s not like she is passionate about her choice and totally committed. And that’s why this is so frustrating, or part of the reason why. Our children’s “choices” are so limited and shaping who they are and who they become.

Please keep telling your stories to Reel Girl. No videos yet, but I’d love to see them! Watch my daughter talking about getting bullied for ‘boy’ shoes here.

Elizabeth Gilbert writes story of woman saved by work

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There is so much to love about this interview with Elizabeth Gilbert in Slate, you’ve got to read the whole thing. Gilbert explains that she feels, in her life, she was saved by her work. Not once, but many times. She didn’t see that story in literature so she decided to write it.

I really did set out to try to write a 19th century novel with a more complete female experience. The only two endings that women ever got in those books—which are stupendous books with fantastic characters and extraordinary women—but at the end you either married Mr. Darcy or you were under the wheels of a train. I really wanted to write a book about a woman whose life is saved by her work, which I feel is not a story we see often, but as somebody whose life has been saved many, many times by my own work, it’s a really important story to me.

 

Do you relate? I sure do.

Gilbert talks about what happened to her when she wrote a man’s story and when she wrote a woman’s story.

It has not escaped my attention that when I wrote about a man’s emotional journey they gave me the National Book Award nomination, but when I wrote about a woman’s emotional journey, they shunted me into the “chick lit” dungeon.

 

And here’s some inspiring advice.

If we’ve somehow internalized this idea that it’s disgraceful or lacking in seriousness to discuss our feelings, our dreams, the ways in which we want to become better human beings—either that somehow those are trivial topics, and of course they are not at all; they’re the big topics, the only topics—if we’ve somehow decided that that’s going to subject us to ridicule or dismissal then that’s kind of our own fault, I think. Just refuse it! I don’t know any other way. Just refuse it, and push through, and eventually, everybody else will catch up…I think the only thing you can do is to battle with your acts. Your acts are your axe. You put your work forward and you don’t back down. I think that’s all you can do. You can get mad, but don’t live there, because that becomes its own paralysis. Just get to work!

 

Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book is called The Signature of All Things. And now, I’m getting off line to finish mine.

 

Thank you grown-ups leading America! Great lesson on conflict resolution

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Here are my daughter’s bags, all packed up to for an overnight trip on the Balclutha boat with her Fifth grade class, a trip they’ve been looking forward to for years. Last night, just after 9PM, we got an email that the trip was cancelled.

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I just went to the Balclutha site to get the link and look what came up.

Because of the federal government shutdown, all national parks are closed and National Park Service webpages are not operating.

I am so disgusted with our so-called government right now. Great lesson for children on how to resolve conflicts. If you don’t like a law– or a rule– throw a tantrum! Jon Stewart explains the situation:

Did you see the Giants game on Sunday? Okay, they lost 31-7. And you know what the Giants didn’t say after that game? ‘If you don’t give us 25 more points by midnight on Monday, we will shut down the [bleep] NFL.

I guess I’ll be showing my daughter this video tonight. It’s clearer on the cause of this shutdown than anything else I’ve seen.

Thanks a lot, grown-ups leading America.