Men Creating Female Heroines: Does it Really Work?

Project Overview

You will be as shocked as I was, I’m sure, to realize that most of the characters shown on my daughter’s television programming and in the movies are not even created by women at all. But it’s true.  Some studies indicate that over 70% of the shows created for kids are not created by women at all.  What does this mean?  Plenty.  Think about it. For so many hundreds of years men have depicted women in idealized versions, creating all sorts of havoc among women.  Short skirts, long hair, plunging necklines, lingerie, dresses, you name it, all of it was not influenced by the women who would be wearing the clothing, but by the male dominated society that decided what was beautiful on a woman.

Help your daughter out today, like I did with mine, and anytime she finds herself watching a show that has a female hero asking her if she was aware that a woman didn’t even create the character. A great  couple of questions that open up a very real discussion is: How do you think a woman would have rewritten that character?  What sorts of things do men put into their characters that women never would?  How does that make you feel as a young woman ?men-creating-female-heroines