Girls Gone Mild

The poster for the new animated action film, Megamind, features five characters: some are alien, some are men. Oh wait, they are all men except for Roxanne Ritchi (voiced by Tina Fey). She’s a quirky news reporter who has two duties—narrating what the guys do, and getting kidnapped. She’s like a prop that needs to be rescued by Brad Pitt. This got us thinking: where are the strong women in children’s films? For decades, the majority of female characters in cartoons and family films have been mostly stuck behind the macho lead, baring their midriffs and looking like Barbie dolls. At NEWSWEEK’s third annual Women and Leadership conference this year, the actress Geena Davis talked about the latest findings from her Institute on Gender in the Media, which was founded to reduce gender stereotyping in media aimed at kids 11 and under. Davis’s research shows that for every female character in a kids’ movie, there are three male characters. Roughly 25 percent of the female characters are shown in sexy, tight, alluring clothes (usually with exposed skin between mid-chest and upper thigh). Their most common occupation is being a royal, and their aspirations are limited almost exclusively to finding romance. Let’s explore some of Hollywood’s biggest perpetrators, shall we?