Bimbos In Bikinis: Are women in movies doomed to be brainless beauties?

About a year ago, I was thinking about the movie The Usual Suspects, and asked myself: ‘what would Verbal Kint be like if he were a woman?’ I then stumbled upon this article here and it seemed that other people had thought similarly to me about replacing a cast of men with a cast of women. This got me thinking about who would play Verbal Kint if she did in fact become a woman, and then, what The Usual Suspects would be like if, instead of five men, they were five women. There’s no reason why this couldn’t happen- the plot could easily replace the male characters for female equivalents- but I knew that there was no way a film like this could, and would, ever get made.

And the reason why? Because no one would believe it. No one would accept that five female ex-cons with nothing to lose would take part in such a seedy crime. And you may say ‘that’s sexist’, and yes it is. But it isn’t me who believes this, it’s you. 

I told people about my idea: The Usual Suspects with women. Exactly the same characters, exactly the same script, but all the actors are now actresses. And here are the two general responses I got:

1) “That wouldn’t make sense, because women don’t go to prison” and 

2) “Women would never have ‘nothing to lose’ because they would have children or husbands to think about”.

And you probably thought the same thing (and if you didn’t, good!). You probably thought ‘how could a movie about middle aged women who have just left prison, have no husbands or children, and are about to commit a serious crime, make any sense’? This is because, if the movie did get made (which it never would since, as we know, women can only be leads in rom-coms), then the script would haveto change- to make the women ‘sexy’. And you might roll your eyes in shock, but sadly, it’s the truth. Unless the female Verbal Kint became a sexy femme fatale, the audience wouldn’t ‘get her’. If she were a dowdy, ugly woman with a physical handicap (like the original) we wouldn’t want to see it, and this is because we have been socially conditioned to think that women can’t be intelligent and tricky unless they use their sexuality- not their brains.

Mary Goodnight from The Man with the Golden Gun is an excellent example of a brainless beauty...

This idea in summarised perfectly in a Meryl Streep quote:

“Nobody tells an actor ‘you’re playing a strong minded man’. We assume that men are strong minded. A strong minded woman is a different animal.”

We only (usually) see women (in movies) as innocent mothers, or sexual objects. And if they are ‘strong minded’ they usually aren’t really, or they are psychotic. So who is to blame for this depiction of women in modern media? I’m sure most people would say ‘men’. But I won’t. Instead I’m pointing the blame directly at the women who have apparently worked tirelessly against this line of thinking: the feminists.

And when I say ‘feminist’ I mean the militant man-hating ones, which I hope are the minority. But even if they are, their voice is so strong that we seem to believe every piece of propaganda they have stuffed down our throat. You see, I think that they are their own worst enemy. They have spent the last few decades villainising and chastising men whilst simultaneously making us believe that women are all innately wonderful, innocent and entirely good creatures, so much so that we now actually believe this. Only men are murderers, only men are sex offenders, only men are evil. And if a women does do something bad, then it must have been because a man forced her, against her intrinsic good nature, to do it. And because of this successful destruction of men, and wholly unrealistic ascension of women, we will only accept several select dimensional portrayals of women in movies and television. We can’t have The Usual Suspects with women, because women couldn’t be these types of characters- ex cons with nothing to lose- and so we would struggle to believe that women like this could even exist. So now we only have two types of ‘evil’ women- the femme fatale who uses her sexuality to destroy men, or the androgynous unattractive psychotic mother figure who is mad and bad because she is the exact opposite of what a ‘female’ should be: caring and maternal; and this makes her a ‘man’ and therefore evil.

The Usual Suspects with women? Never gonna happen...

Buffy The Vampire Slayer was a cultural sensation, and was supposedly meant to lead the way forward for competent, intelligent, resourceful and therefore ‘equal’ women. But has it? In movies, it is exceptionally rare to see a woman who is the equivalent of Buffy Summers: a smart, confident, strong (both physically and mentally) and capable woman who can handle herself and protect her friends (without being the assistant to her male counterpart), and if there is, she will quickly be broken down or 'put in her place' by a male character, and then become a subservient drone.

Buffy Summers was strong, sassy and sexy...

In movies, women are usually there to look pretty and assist men. And, of course, you can’t only blame men for this. ‘Most of the writers in Hollywood are men!’ I hear you cry. And yes, this is true, but Twilight and Harry Potter- both written by women- prove that even women themselves write female characters as subservient sidekicks needing to be saved by a man. One of my pet hates about the Harry Potter series is that I always felt Hermione should have been the main character. Hermione is the one who is intelligent, resourceful and competent, yet she remains a sidekick, and is never really fully appreciated for what she does to help Harry. This is most prominent in The Goblet Of Fire (the last book I read in the series), when she consistently helps Harry out in the tournament he is taking part in. As a thirteen year old boy, I kept thinking ‘why didn’t Hermione get picked for the tournament? It would have made more sense!’ And yes, I know it was rigged, but still, it would have made much more sense for Harry Potter to be called Hermione Granger and be about her, since she’s a much better character and she actually does something to propel the plot forward, whereas Harry consistently does nothing- as events he plays no active role in constantly happen around him and he regularly fails to stop or alter them- and yet somehow manages to be the hero protagonist. And the reason why was probably because if a little girl had been a main character, then the book would only be pitched to, and read by, other little girls, whereas a boy protagonist ensures that both boys and girls can read it, as boys ‘wouldn’t want to read a story with a girl as the main character’. And it is sad that this is probably true- that men (and probably women too) prefer to watch men as the central heroes, and not women.

Thankfully, since Buffy, there have been other television programmes successful centred around strong female protagonists. Nikita is probably the best example, since three of the lead characters (Nikita, Alex and Amanda) are all brilliant, three dimensional women that could easily be switched out for male actors and there would be no difference in the plot or script. They are all intelligent, capable and strong and don’t need men to save them from danger. And yes, they are also all stunningly attractive, but television and movies are visual media- we don’t want to see ugly people on-screen- and in all fairness, the men who are in this programme are also physically attractive too.

Nikita and Alex don't need men to constantly save them...

Another example of great female characters can be seen in the short lived but excellent series Legend Of The Seeker. Now here we have an example of the two supporting female characters (Kahlan and Cara) being much stronger than the lead male protagonist: they are cleverer, more powerful and kick a lot more ass than he does. And this is also true for Chuck, where CIA Agent Sarah’s job is to protect computer geek Chuck at all costs. And does this detract from the series’? Not at all- it makes them both better. Do they emasculate the male viewers? I doubt it. Kahlan, Cara and Sarah are not just amazingly beautiful, they are also superbly wonderful, and as any male fan of either show would tell you, they are attracted to these characters not only because they are attractive, but also because they have brains and are also fully fleshed, competent and resourceful characters- and this makes them far more appealing than if they were onlygorgeous.

Kahlan and Cara are more powerful than the lead male character in Legend Of The Seeker...

This year, The Avengers became one of the highest grossing movies of all time. It also had a great female character in it: The Black Widow. Not only is she beautiful, she actually has a decent role, and holds her own when working alongside five men who have superhuman powers (when she doesn’t). She doesn’t need to be ‘rescued’ at the end, and contributes a lot to helping save the day (which is, of course, a collaboration between all of the protagonists). You might argue that she was only put in so that the movie wasn’t a sausage fest, and although this may be true, the male Avengers are, like her, heavily fetishized throughout the course of the movie, so, as I stated earlier, as a visual medium, we want to see attractive people because it is a form of escapism. But will the Black Widow get her own spin off movie? I highly doubt it. Female superheroes have never done well at the box office, and this is probably because viewers (both men and women) want to see women in subservient roles- and the new James Bond movie Skyfall proves this.

The main Bond woman in Skyfall is, oddly enough, M: 007’s boss. She’s presumably one of the most powerful women in the country if she is in charge of the Secret Agent division of the MI6, and yet, she quickly makes a series of stupid mistakes that we discover she has been doing throughout the course of her career that put her life at risk, and then has to be protected and saved by none other than James Bond.  So essentially, one of the smartest, most powerful women in the series (and the country) is actually an incompetent ‘silly old woman’ who needs a man to rescue her from her own errors.

Even M falls under Bond's spell: by becoming an incompetent idiot.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised. After all, James Bond has built its reputation on always having a sexually available and disposable sidekick woman who is there only to assist Bond and ultimately pleasure him. These are called ‘Bond Girls’. And plenty of other films also have main female characters who are exactly the same. Just think of any movie in which a woman is there to assist the male lead, sleep with him, and be put into a perilous situation so that he can rescue her from it.  I’m sure you can think of at least one.

I love James Bond movies, but I can’t defend their sexism. Sure, seeing Mary Goodnight running around aimlessly in a bikini is funny in The Man with the Golden Gun, mainly because it has that sexist 70s charm that we can look back and laugh at, and tell ourselves no longer exists. But sadly, it does. Skyfall, Quantum Of Solace, and Casino Royale, the last three Bond films, which are meant to be ‘modern’ and a ‘new take’ on Bond, all have characters exactly like Mary Goodnight: useless but beautiful women that Bond sleeps with and then discards.  

Why couldn’t the Bond Girl save Bond for a change? Why couldn’t Bond be kidnapped by a villain and need to be rescued by the Bond Girl? Surely this would be more realistic, since Bond is almost always the target for the villain’s attacks and anger. And if this did happen, then I’m sure the testicles of the men sitting in the audience watching the movie wouldn’t shrivel up in disgust and horror. And even if the female character doesn’t ultimately save the day (which she never does) you could of course make her contribute to doing so- like in the film The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which, unusually, has the female love interest not be kidnapped or in peril at the final showdown as she instead runs off to do something vitally important that results in saving the day.

A Bond Girl only succeeds in single handedly saving the day twice in the entirety of the Bond series: in GoldenEye (Natalya hacks the computer to stop GoldenEye) and Die Another Day(Jynx flies the aeroplane into the ‘sunbeam’ to make the computer malfunction, and so stop global destruction). So out of 23 movies, spanning 50 years, the female assistant has only ever been essentially ‘useful’ and ‘valuable’ in a non-sexual way twice. Even in The Spy Who Loved Me, when the Bond Girl is supposedly Bond’s female equivalent, as soon as bad stuff happens she is usually pushed to the side so that Bond can take the lead, and at the end she is kidnapped, put in a bikini and drenched in water. In all fairness to the 70s Bond movies, Roger Moore is the first Bond who actually goes out of his way to save the life of a woman because her life is in danger and for no other reason (as Sean Connery’s Bond never attempts to save the Bond Girl unless he needs her for something- usually sex). But still even when Bond tries to save the helpless women he meets along the way, he still treats them terribly by occasionally slapping them and forcing them to do things against their will. The most jarring example is in Licence To Kill, when Bond physically attacks Pam Bouvier because he thinks she has betrayed him, even though all of her actions have shown otherwise. This moment is uncomfortable viewing, especially as Pam quickly forgives Bond and continues to love him (even though he is also cheating on her with someone else). 

The Black Widow can hold her own in a movie dominated by men.

And yes, one could argue that the point of these movies, and of all movies, is that they are escapism and so are meant to be sexual fantasies and an unrealistic depiction of reality. And of course that is true, but why can’t these so called ‘sexual fantasies’ have women who aren’t just there to be sexually available to men? If I ever found myself in an adventurous situation where I was a person like James Bond, I would prefer to work alongside a character like Nikita or Cara from Legend Of The Seeker or Sarah from Chuck than Mary Goodnight. I wouldn’t want an assistant who is beautiful but stupid; I would want to be a part of a team in which every individual contributes something (including myself). A woman who can kick some serious ass when she has to and is resourceful and intelligent is much sexier to me than a bimbo who runs around in a bikini screaming and putting my life in danger so that I can rescue her. Do men really need to fantasize about/be surrounded by docile women to feel like more of a ‘man’? Most of the men I know in relationships in real life aren’t the ones who ‘wear the trousers’ anyway- so perhaps seeing men telling women what to do onscreen- and not the other way around- is the fantasy because the truth is so far removed from it.

We need to give women better roles. We can’t allow women to continue to only be fetishized for their looks. Sure, we want to see attractive people on screen, but we need to make them attractive not only for their beauty but because they are awesome in other ways too, just like Kahlan, Sarah and Nikita.

Sarah's main role in Chuck is to protect him at all costs- which she does incredibly successfully...

Unfortunately, Hollywood’s temporary ‘solution’ is, instead of making women better, to sexualise male characters as heavily instead (Twilight and unfortunately any Daniel Craig Bond film are excellent examples of this). So now we are doing the same thing to men that has happened to women, and pretty soon both genders will only care about physical appearance regardless of anything else.  Some writers are also making male characters much worse to ‘compliment’ the female ones, so that both characters are crappy. A great example of this is in the movie Hitch, where the female belittles and emasculates Hitch to ‘bring him down a notch’- and we are supposed to support this destruction of a confident man- so that by the end, he has to beg on his knees for her love. This is wrong, because no male or female character should have to be chastised by their love interest and then beg for their adoration. In movies, especially rom-coms, and television, we should be showing positive depictions of both men and women in romantic relationships, because, like it or not, media does affect how we view one another.

Modern movies need to have equally strong male and female characters. I’m not saying that every character has to be ‘strong’ but instead am saying that if you are going to have an ‘equal’ female character to someone like Bond, then make her equal. Men’s penises won’t melt if you do. In fact, the opposite could be true. But perhaps women don’t want to see strong female characters onscreen either, as women don’t like ‘to be told what to do’ by other women (something I’ve seen countless times in real life). We shouldn’t make men worse to make women look better- we should just make female characters awesome. If scriptwriters continue to make women only sexually available assistants, like the Bond series is continuing to do, then men (and women) will continue to believe that this is all women are.

So hopefully one day someone will make a female equivalent of The Usual Suspects that doesn’t rely on sexualising the female stars, and shows that actresses can have as many different roles as their male counterparts, just as they do in real life.