35 Things Movies Get Wrong About Women Every Single Time

1.

Every time I remember 50 Shades of Grey exists, I want to projectile vomit in rage. Literally both a book and movie about a one dimensional woman whose entire self worth is validated by an awful man, that manages to somehow be even worse than Twilight.

Medusas_snakes:

I hate read all 3 books in one weekend when I was getting over the flu. The flu was the better experience of the two.

2.

Bella Swan from Twilight. Her dependence on Edward to the point that she can barely even live when he leaves her is just pathetic and a bad role model for the teen/young adult girls that read those books. Those books romanticize female weakness and enforce the idea that having a boyfriend is more important than even being alive.

Exact_Opportunity606:

My speculation on why he couldn’t read her mind was because there weren’t any thoughts in there to begin with.

3.

It is a trope – the woman in a movie always runs away from violence.

They trip the bad person/monster or hit them with a pan and then… Run away

NO. That thing is going to attack you. Attack it first. Use the pan you just dropped until its head is no longer recognizable.

Women in stories rarely fight back and all of my instincts are the opposite.

I’m not a violent person but I’m also not stupid. Women are portrayed as tactically idiotic victims.

sneaky518:

Women don’t just trip, they trip over nothing. It’s like a pratfall trip. When you’re scared you generally get improved athletic performance from adrenaline, but movie and TV show women fall over their own feet instead.

4.

As a woman, we all only have a few standard jobs to choose from:

– kindergarten teacher
– housewife and mom
– magazine something (or, variation: Intrepid Girl Reporter)
– Nurse
– military who grew up with 37 brothers

Those are your only available careers, ladies. Enjoy!

library_wench:

Hey! You totally forgot about the viable career options of:

Owner of a cutesy little shop (that in real life would never make a profit), and

Cinderella job (maid, waitress, or personal assistant to a total b*tch) that you keep until you fall for the rich love interest.

5.

Any movie where there is a woman who’s introduced in a power position and then proceeds to do nothing the rest of the film except ask stupid questions and cry.

A good example of this was Jurassic World for me. The main female character is supposed to be the operations manager of the park and is introduced as the stuck up boss type and then the whole rest of the movie all she does is run in heels until she falls at the exact moments when the hero can save her, and ask questions like “what’s that?” and “where are we going?”

It p***ed me the off because she’s supposed to be the person who knows about the operations and layout of the park- why would you have her be the person asking those questions?

There are other issues for me, like running really fast through the jungle in high heels, having a perfect clean outfit after a dinosaur fight, and being uptight in the beginning (won’t drink tequila because she’s on a diet) and then her arc is just falling in love and becoming a nurturing motherly woman. All around annoying.

shypster:

They did her assistant so dirty too. Her death scene was so unnecessarily long. For the crime of not wanting to babysit her boss’s nephews?

whydonttheysayegg:

My biggest issue with her, on top of everything you mentioned, was the perfectly clean white dress and heels at all times while she is running through the mud. Like, that’s not how mud works.

7.

Nearly all of them.
Wakes up. Perfect hair.
Escapes a deadly attack and still has better hair than me after visiting my hairstylist.

the-rioter:

Oh oh, I also need to include:

Woman sleeps in full make-up like this is normal.

The one scene in Scrubs where Eliot and JD hook up the second time around and she’s hanging out in her tank top and shorts PJs because her car with her stuff was stolen and when the intimate scene starts and she strips she’s in a full red matching bra/panties set under her pajamas.

The entirety of the 3rd Transformers movie where the woman who replaced Megan Fox as the love interest is in a full, white top/bottom ensemble and gets ZERO dirt on her outfit as buildings are literally collapsing around her.

8.

I’m sure there’s worse examples but I was always bothered by how the women in The Walking Dead stayed gorgeous and never had a problem with their periods.

fawn-witch:

And no body hair, AT ALL?!? You telling me that not a single woman at the end of the world has at least a little bit of a ladytash?

cant_be_me:

Yep, we want realism in our dystopian/historical fiction, which means all of the r**e everywhere but somehow does not include other realistic physical elements like messed up teeth or armpit hair or untweezed eyebrows or catastrophic sunburn or sepsis from a tiny blister from a bad pair of shoes or any indication of how these people smell with no shower access or anything unattractive like that.

9.

I really hate the trope in fantasy and historical dramas where a pregnant woman is having a difficult birth and goes “let me die, but save the baby” or some other iteration of self-sacrifice.

I get that it’s dramatic but it’s so so ubiquitous and I’m pretty sure that the “it’s either her or her baby” trolly problem wasn’t super common in premodern medicine. More like “yeah you both gonna die bruh”.

11.

A CSI episode where the plot hinges on the fact that no woman would only wear PART of a lacey underwear set (IE, just the panties), especially when the lingerie was SO expensive ($35).

Like? 1) Women can wear super nice underwear and just a plain bra. Or vice versa. They don’t HAVE to be a set.

2) Really? $35 is an expensive lingerie set? Even if this was in the 90s/2000s, a set cost at least $60 at Victoria’s Secret, and that’s not even what I’d consider “fancy” lingerie.

12.

I love the ones where the plain nerdy woman just needs to take off her glasses and let her hair down (and undo a few buttons) and suddenly she is a supermodel. She had no idea she could be so attractive if only she took off those silly glasses!

If I take off my glasses I will struggle to correctly identify people standing five feet away. I guess being blind is fine so long as you look good?

Anon:

This bothered me a lot in She’s All That. Even though I felt like Zack’s character sort of saw Laney for who she was before she got made over, at the same time it was like, was it really necessary? He didn’t seem “starstruck” with her until she came down in a red dress, freshly cut hair and makeup and no glasses. I won’t lie, I thought she looked cute the way she looked before in the movie, with the clothes that were her, her long hair and her cute glasses.

But guys won’t notice you that much unless you are smoking hot, right?

ill-settle-for:

“He had noticed, not that Elfine was beautiful, but that he loved Elfine.” -Cold Comfort Farm

I think it’s possible for someone to find a woman attractive in her everyday getup and still be in awe when he sees her in makeup and a well-cut dress; I think it’s almost impossible to get that across in film.
I mean, fancy clothes and makeup are designed to make us look good. They’re good at it. You can look equally as enticing in good casual clothes and glasses, but that doesn’t mean a man won’t notice when you’re dressed to go out either.

It’s just very difficult to portray that kind of thing in a movie. You can write out someone’s thoughts (if you care to) but you can’t always get them across just by facial expressions, etc.

13.

What’s up with all the beaten-up yet so gorgeous looking women in those apocalypse movies?

Perfect trimmed eyebrows and mascara? Dude, their body shimmers under sunlight! Tell me where they got body oil and glitter when the zombies come!

And who the heck goes to a tropical forest wearing short sleeves, the bugs will eat you!

I don’t ask for them to be ugly or anything but at least try?

14.

Black Widow’s “I’m a monster… Just like you” speech in Avengers: Age of Ultron. She’s a monster not because she’s unalived people but because… She’s infertile. An absolute Marvel classic.

PracticalSolution352:

I remember being really excited that they were going to address the moral grey-ness that a character who is an As**ssin (but only taught that) must have… And they did the no babies reveal and I almost cried in frustration. Like I want deep and three demisional characters damn it!!!

15.

Any instance where it’s implied women faint at the sight of blood.

Comfortable_Bell9539:

And where it’s implied that they’re cowardly in general – oh god, I should have mentioned that girl in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom… She was useless as f**k, always crying and screaming hysterically.

16.

The movie Crazy, Stupid, Love. It has a side story where the young teenage son has a crush on the 17 year old babysitter, who in turn has a crush on the dad (Steve Carell). The story includes the girl taking nudes of herself for Carell’s character and his son basically stalking and harassing the her. After repeatedly turning down his advances she has a conversation where she tells the boy that his actions make her uncomfortable.

When the film resolves, she still doesn’t date the boy but she gives him her nude pictures!! My brain did a record scratch. What man believes a girl will seek out her stalker, who makes her noticeably uncomfortable, and give him nudes as a consolation prize?! Just. Wow.

The way that was written still drives me crazy and it wasn’t even a very big part of the story.

Reddish81:

Yes this movie is deeply troubling – even worse that I used to love it!

17.

Teyla from Stargate Atlantis. While heavily pregnant, she is captured by evil aliens. Of course for ~the drama~ she goes into labor on their ship, and her only assistance is the awkward nerdy science guy who’s panicking about having to deliver a baby. As they’re running down the hallways trying to make their escape, she has to stop to give birth. It maybe takes 30 minutes? A short enough timeframe that no aliens walk down the hallway and discover them. (Her first baby, by the way.)

The baby comes out clean, and also
looking about six months old. No gushing blood (or other bodily substances). No placenta.

One commercial break later, she’s up and continuing the dash for safety, fighting off aliens with one arm with the baby in her other arm. Her hair is a little disheveled but she’s still got a full face of makeup on.

Okay, to be fair, technically she is Athosian and not human, but ‘Athosian’ is Stargate for ‘we’re going to call them aliens but our makeup department DGAF and in every respect they’re just going to look and act like humans’.

The actress was pregnant IRL and the writers had *months* to try to lampshade it a little! At a prenatal appointment have the doctor comment, “So your people give birth quickly, without any pain or blood? Fascinating!” *Some* kind of half-baked explanation.

I’ve seen some pretty bad on-screen birth scenes, but that one wins the Worst Ever award pretty handily.

18.

Specifically the book – Bird Box.

I remember reading the birth scene and wondering out loud if the author had ever met a woman who’d given birth before. Unfortunately I have erased from my mind precisely what it was that offended me so much!

alyeffy:

SPOILERS but at least in BirdBox, Sandra Bullock’s character didn’t get pregnant again during the 5 years before they learned the existence of the blind school sanctuary.
For A Quiet Place, the whole time I kept thinking, why the heck would you choose to have babies, that are literally unable to stop making noise when their needs are not met, in an apocalyptic world ravaged by monsters with ultra sensitive hearing. They’re literally endangering the rest of their still alive children by doing so too.

21.

One of the most annoying general tropes in fiction I find is when by the end of the story the only people left alive is the main character and their love interest. It’s like the moment two characters show affection to each other and you immediately realize everyone around them is going to die.

Comfortable_Bell9539:

“Oh no, a meteor is going to crash on Earth ! We’re all going to end up like the dinosaurs !”
“We should kiss then, while we’re still alive”
“Okay”

23.

I’ve been watching a lot of youtube videos about Colleen Hoover books lately and boy howdy is it astounding how bad she is at writing characters of her own gender. And equally, how abysmal she is at writing compelling romantic male leads. All her men are next level horrible, and she writes romance. I seriously don’t understand how she’s published, let alone how she sells as many books as she does. The line “We laugh about our son’s big balls,” is burned into my head forever now.

Also, I guess she had one or more books she had to edit in later editions because the originals had straight up SA scenes? What the heck.

25.

It’s not THE WORST but my enjoyment of Baby Driver was lessened bc of how empty and stupid I found the love interest waitress. She has no life outside of falling in love with a dull guy to the point she even puts her life on hold to wait until he gets out of jail? They werent even officially dating!!!!

And also the other thief played by Eiza Gonzales who did nothing but be pretty and sit on Jon Hamms lap.

Fun movie, bad female characters.

26.

All the women in The Birds (old, I know) are so infuriating. Hitchcock was a big time misogynist of course. They simply cannot do anything without a man’s direction!

27.

Every anime portrayal of females. I don’t know if it has Something to do with Japanese society, but for some reason most females are shown in the dire need of getting a men. Like if they lived entirely for that. There are exceptions of course, like ghost in the shell or evangelion, but it seems to be a trend for some reason.

reesedra:

Not to mention how they’re all mentally 12. Anime is creepy and has problems.

29.

For me, it has got to be virtually every single “Bond” girl. I loathe James Bond, with a passion, have done so since my parents made me watch a lot of the movies when I was a child.

I just hate the trope of “I hate you! Now let’s make hot steamy love!” and Bond himself is obviously so much worse but the women tend to be so empty brained and swooning at this gross dude.

There are so exceptions but they are few and far between.

fuzzbeebs:

It’s even worse than that. Most of the early “Bond girls” were dubbed over, because they would cast the prettiest young thing they find, who often couldn’t act well or even had a strong accent or poor English. I can’t imagine these women were treated well at all because they were ONLY there to look pretty. They hired someone else (Nikki van der Syl most often) to record their lines.

30.

Periods in “The Banned and the Banished” book series.

Random girl is fine. No sign of incoming period, no previous mention of it. Then suddenly, intense stomach pain, the girl falls to her knees and/or curls up into a ball. 2 and a half seconds later, waterfall of blood, some magic linked to blood activates, and we don’t talk about periods at all until it’s necessary for magic at some other point of the story. Oh and also, both times, it’s the girl’s very first period.

Like what ??? What did the author smoke ? It doesn’t happen so suddenly like that ! And also, it’s good to talk about periods, but this feels way too forced.

Zepangolynn:

Hate to have to point this out, but outside of the magic, that is exactly how my periods went for YEARS, starting from the very first one. No PMS, no other warnings until sudden horrifying pain about five minutes to an hour before bleeding, and bleeding heavily. The pain only lasted for one day each time, so I would curl up in an agonized ball roughly once a month and then go back to behaving as normal the next day. Sounds like this girl has magic endometriosis, which frankly would be a nicer pay off than the ordinary kind with potential future cancer.

LFuculokinase:

Endometriosis pain is so bizarre. I had fairly normal periods for years until one day I woke up in the middle of the night with what felt like a water balloon slowly expanding up my bum until it reached a 10/10 pain. So next thing I know, I have sweat pouring down my body and I start retching while trying to find a position that didn’t hurt. I had no idea what TF was happening, but I was convinced that my anus was about to shot-put itself out of my body at any given moment. Then I noticed it always happened two days before my period. I lucked out with BC working to alleviate symptoms for me.

32.

16 year old me would hate me for saying this, but Scully from the X Files. I was in high school when the show first started, but I bought the box set recently and have been watching it again and am shocked at how little agency the character actually has. I remember 20+ years ago when the show was advertised as having a strong female lead but in hindsight she is there to make Mulder look good by being a straw man caricature of whatever scientific theory the show wants to subvert this week, she has no identity outside her role in the partnership (except when it’s narratively convenient, like her father’s death), and when the show wants to tell us the stakes are high, something happens to Scully so that she needs rescuing by her unstable, one-dimensional partner.

In the context of early 90s network TV, or the multitude of police procedurals that came after it, it’s not the most egregious portrayal of women out there. But I was in high school in the early 90s and loved the X Files, it’s been sad watching it back and realising how regressive the gender politics are between the lead characters.

33.

I recently watched The Untouchables for the first time and was ready to scream into a pillow at a scene toward the end where a young mother is just so unbelievably helpless.

First, she can’t for the life of her figure out how to get a stroller and a suitcase up a flight of stairs and Kevin Costner’s character takes forever until he finally does the gentlemanly thing and helps her with the stroller.

Then, Costner freezes on the very last step because he spots the man he’s looking for and refuses to let the mother take the stroller from him. The stroller is literally pointing downwards something like two stories of steps. The mother does the soft-natured thing of kindly telling him that it’s okay and she can take the stroller now, but he’s too distracted. She becomes stressed because her baby’s life is in danger but can only helplessly keep telling him to please give her the stroller.

What happens next? The most excruciating slow-motion scene in cinema history. Costner LETS GO of the stroller to pull his gun out and he and the man start shooting at each other. The stroller rolls down the flight of stairs. Does the mother run after the stroller to save the baby? No, she throws herself down on the ground and reaches for the handle but can’t reach it. Bullets fly everywhere, just barely missing the stroller. Does the woman get up and hurry after the stroller? No, she keeps stretching her arms towards it while yelling with no sound for dramatic effect ”My baby….!”

I still get frustrated just thinking back to that scene.