Sarah Rees Brennan

February 10, 2012

clio.: I am sick of people arbitrarily bashing actresses for playing shitty parts.

It’s official: Katherine Heigl will not rest until every last person on Earth is a misogynist. A self-made woman who seems to be deeply uncomfortable with the notion of her own success, it’s as if Heigl is only interested in roles that portray single women as being one good man…

(Haven’t yet read the post, may be an excellent post, just really agree with this point.)

Women who want to do comedy especially have horribly, horribly limited choices. I love Katherine Heigl: when I was a teenager watching Roswell the fact she had more weight on her than the other two girls but was ever regarded as the most attractive one always pleased me.

(She was always skinny, don’t get me wrong, but less skinny! Anyway I love a shameless femme fatale.) And I love Kristen Bell, and seeing her role in FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL made me cry out in horror (oh my god, I never want to see any lady shoved off a dude and called names, but least of all Kristen Bell)–but I don’t blame her for taking it.

I hope the success of Bridesmaids and having TV shows like Parks & Recreation and 30 Rock will help with this? But it’s a long way, baby, and it comes from ideas like–a) women aren’t funny, b) women who are beautiful can’t be funny, they should be being BEAUTIFUL! c) anyway they are intimidating if they’re funny. And if they’re funny, smart AND beautiful, holy God, the only way to make anyone like them is to humiliate them. As follows– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH2Bpl42WXo

These are the roles actresses get offered. It is terrible. It is not their fault.

Which is not to say I would not LOVE to see more girl-positive rom-coms. In the day of the Hepburns there were more! My friends with teenage girls tell me their teenage girls are still watching ‘Mean Girls’ and 'Clueless’ because… because the new movies really don’t say 'you can be beautiful, smart and funny.’

Though Easy A did, and I think that’s why it succeeded and rocketed Emma Stone to stardom. My baby brother–raised among feminists!–said 'Girls aren’t funny–ow Sarah stop hitting me I mean FAMOUS girls–but SHE IS–ow Sarah I was paying her a compliment!’

He is wrong, and I kept hitting him. I also quoted Tina Fey–'Christopher Hitchens says women aren’t funny? Do you have anything to say to that? Yes… It’s an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don’t like something, it is empirically not good. I don’t like Chinese food, but I don’t write articles trying to prove that it doesn’t exist.’

But the reasons he (my baby brother, not this Hitchens dude) thinks so are because girls aren’t being given the MATERIAL.

Easy A, hold me until more come.