Why it’s important to have more “Brave” roles for women in movies

Brave is an important movie, perhaps more important than it thought it might be. Media attention aside for the moment. Revenue and profit aside too, for the moment.

Brave is a movie about women.

I’ve had people ask me why that point is important. It’s important because women honestly don’t feature in most movies. Actually, they don’t feature in most media.

That statement might send some people into scoffing disbelief, but pay close attention to it. I said feature. Women might exist in every movie or television show you’ve seen recently – but do they feature? Is there more than one woman in that movie? Do they progress the plot? And Bechdel’s infamous question: do they talk about anything other than a man?

For interest, I had a look at the top 50 most popular 2012 movies in IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/search/title?year=2012,2012&title_type=feature&sort=moviemeter,asc

As of writing this blog, 6 of those 50 had female leads – and one of those was Twilight. Another 3 titles had split 50/50 male and female leads.

Considering women are half the population, those aren’t great odds.

This is important, and no, it’s not just because I’m menstruating.

Movies themselves are a microcosm of our current culture. Women being underrepresented in movies says something about our culture at large. While egalitarianism is no longer at the forefront of our minds – ‘cause women can work and buy their own tampons and shit – this phenomenon still shows our current culture clearly. This underuse shows that men – and their stories – are more important to our society.

Brave is Pixar’s thirteenth movie, and their first female protagonist. Why? It’s a money thing. There’s a secretive agreement we’ve all come to, in the boardrooms of the people who greenlight movies and in the isles of Target when you’re buying a movie to watch: men will watch movies about men, and women will watch movies about women AND men.

The movie houses get nervous about releasing things with female leads because they honestly think it can’t sustain a male audience and thus will lose out on 50% of the supposed earnings.

Which is why Brave is so important. Because Brave is a great movie, it’s an actioned packed, emotional movie about breaking social norms. About breaking free and taking charge of your own destiny.

And it’s driven by women. Strong women, who can lead and have their own stuff to deal with, and their own female-female relationships to nurture. And just like little girls could love Woody and Buzz – little boys could love Merida.

And no, I’m not saying you should never have a movie aimed at women, or a movie aimed at men. I’m just saying, that by the law of averages, we should be about 50/50 and we’re not – we’re nowhere near.

It's an anthropomorphic sausage party up in here

This issue is especially important in children’s movies, because children need role models. Most female roles in children’s movies are either princess (a ‘girls’ movie), a secondary character or some sort of token femme-ification of a male character.

How did that woman get in here?

Children are like little sponges, and if all little girls can take away from movies to look up to is a token female they’re going to learn their place in our society very well and very quickly. They’re going to learn that women aren’t equal. They’re going to learn that a story about a women is merely a secondary plot. They’re going to learn that a woman is just not as important as a man is.

It’s important for women to be represented in movies, and television and books. And our society can change its current standpoint. If it's Brave enough.