Tag Archives: nudity

Shocking New Study Reveals Overwhelming Sexism in TV & Film Ads

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Patricia Arquette , speech, feminism, oscar speech, equal pay, Winner of Best Actress In A Supporting Role Oscar 2015Women may be fighting for equality but there is still a long way to go. TV, cinema and online adverts are overwhelmingly biased against women, with men appearing on screen FOUR times more than women, and men speaking SEVEN times more than women, according to groundbreaking new research.

The study by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media – founded by the Thelma and Louise star – and ad agency JWT New York, looked at more than 2,000 ads from over the last 10 years to get the results.

The report, released at the 2017 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity – the biggest global event in the advertising world  –  also found:

·       Women are twice more likely than men to be shown partially or fully nude.

·       There are twice as many male characters in ads than female characters.

·       25% of ads feature men only, while only 5% of ads feature women only.

·      18% of ads feature only male voices, while less than 3% of ads featuring female voices only.

·        Women in ads are mostly in their 20s while men are in their 20s, 30s, and 40s.

·        Men are almost twice as likely to be funny than women.

·        One in 10 female characters are shown in sexually revealing clothing – six times the number of male characters.

·        Men are 62% more likely to be shown as intelligent.

·        Women are 48% more likely to be shown in the kitchen while men are 50% more likely to be shown at a sporting event.

·        One in three men are shown to have a job compared to one in four women.

 

The researchers concluded that female presence and portrayal in ads has not changed or improved for more than a decade, from 2006 to this day.

The report, called Unpacking Gender Bias in Advertising, examined a decade’s worth of winners and entries to the Cannes Lions Awards – the Oscars of the ad industry – using automation to analyse the split between men and women.

It aims at raising awareness of explicit and implicit gender bias in advertising, and its powerful ripple effects in the world.

Madeline Di Nonno, CEO of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, said: “By changing the narrative, the images we use, the stories we tell about women, we can dramatically change the way the world values women and how women and girls see themselves. It’s not enough to portray more women. We need a more progressive and inclusive representation of women.”

Brent Choi, Chief Creative Officer, J. Walter Thompson New York: “What this research shows is that our industry has tent-pole moments, amazing actions or campaigns when we all rally around women, but when it comes to creating our ‘regular’ ads for our ‘regular’ clients, we forget about them.”
The research from The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media at Mount Saint Mary’s University and J. Walter Thompson New York, in collaboration with University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering, analysed more than 2,000 films from the Cannes Lions archive (English language only).

Actresses Deserve Much More Than Being ‘The Girl’ And a Naked One At That

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film characters - anna paquinIn my other life as an actress I have noticed a worrying trend. Well, I say ‘trend’ but actually it has been going on for years: female parts in films were the character has no name and is called ‘The girl’. The girl is usually the only female part in the film and will also have at least one nude scene. Just because it is not humiliating enough to be offered a script where all of the men have names and you don’t, you also have to get your tits out. Nameless and objectified: actresses deserve better than this. WOMEN KIND deserves better than this.

It is hard to describe just how depressing it is to work in an industry where women are reduced constantly to the sum of their parts and not even named. the worrying thing is that this is a common practice. Upon complaining about this on my Facebook, prominent film maker and casting director Rory O’Donnell said: “This is incredibly common. I made fun of it when I wrote The Landlady and gave all the female characters first, last and nicknames and called the only male character ‘The Boyfriend’….but he did get a name during shooting.” If only there were more people like Rory. 

But what is to be done? Well we need more female filmmakers for a start. Here are some highlights from an amazing survey done by Stephen Follows on his must-read blog.

 

  • Between 2009-13, women made up 26.2% of crew members on British films.
  • This compares favourably with top US films over the same period (22.2%)
  • Of all the departments, the Transportation department is the most male, with only 7.7% women.
  • The only departments to have a majority of women are Make-up, Casting, Costume and Production.
  • Visual Effects is the largest department on most major movies and yet only has 16.5% women.
  • 6.4% of composers on UK films were women.
  • 14% of UK films had a female director, compared with 3% of top US films.
  • The percentage of women on British films has barely changed in the past five years.

 

Read more about his survey here. It was in all of the papers so Stephen is truly doing his part for equality.  I often get asked why I don’t leave the industry. The truth is I did take a little break. Of course if my agent had called during that period I would have not said no, but it was a quiet period and I took the moment to reflect on my chosen path. One of them anyway. I often think that if I did not have this magazine and did not make my own projects I might go slightly mad. Luckily I do and I can fight instead. I made Prose & Cons which had a strong female cast and I am making more films with my filmmaking partner Steve McAleavy. The way forward is not to quit the industry, not to let these men give our breasts the starring role while our actual talent is just a nameless supporting character: the key is to raise awareness and FIGHT. Get men to join the battle and equal the playing field. Women deserve more and we won’t stop until we get it. The fightback starts here.

 

Catherine Balavage is a writer, film director, actress and the owner and editor of this magazine. She is also a published author and wrote the book How To Be a Successful Actor: Becoming an Actorpreneur which has received rave reviews and is a must for actors everywhere.

 

 

The Wolf Of Wall Street Review

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Greed, riches, drugs, naked women, sex…The Wolf Of Wall Street certainly is debauched, based on the memoirs of convicted stock market trader Jordan Belfort, a man who makes Gordon Gekko seem like a sweet office boy, the film certainly gives the financial industry a bad name- something that the friend I saw it with (a financial analyst) was non to pleased about.

The Wolf of Wall StreetIn truth Jordan Belfort is a different animal all together. He starts off with a wife and no intention to drink or do drugs. How hard he falls indeed. After losing his job at L.F Rothschild he gets a job trading penny stocks, from there he starts up his own business, the Stratton Oakmont brokerage firm (which was the inspiration for the 2000 film Boiler Room) with the help of friend Donnie Azoff, (played by Johan Hill who famously did the role for $60,000; which was less than $10,000 per the 10 month work), they steal from poor people and then work their way up to stealing from rich people. They do more than their own body weight in drugs and they sleep with so many women it is hard to believe their penis didn’t fall off.

It is hard to go wrong with a Scorsese film and DiCaprio and Scorsese make quite a team. DiCaprio deserves an Oscar for his performance. There were times he was so into his character I didn’t even recognise DiCaprio anywhere. He was once so good he was the De Niro of our generation. Now he is just the DiCaprio of our generation: an actor so good he is on a level all by himself. Johan Hill also gives an Oscar-worthy performance. His comic timing is perfect. He can deliver any line in the world and make it funny. This film shows his true potential. Hill has always been under-rated.

It is not necessarily the movies fault but this is a terrible film for women. Few women get to keep their clothes on and the rest do full-blown, full-frontal nudity with shaved ‘private areas’. Ahem. Even the lead, Margot Robbie who plays DiCaprio’s second wife,  who insisted she didn’t mind. Hmm. But despite all of this sex and the actual orgies the only real male nudity is a fake and flaccid fake penis and a from-the-back nude scene of DiCaprio (twice) and, yes, it was really him. Few women are more than window dressing, naked window dressing, and even one of the ‘original 20’ stockbrokers who is female, Kimmie Belzer, doesn’t even get a mention until the end of the movie. Another gets her head shaved for $10,000. An uncomfortable scene. All of the nudity is too much and embarrassing. It is supposed to be adult and decadent but is, actually, just sad and adolescent. I was depressed by the misogyny in the film. It’s 2014. Women deserve more than this.

The Wolf of Wall Street is an enjoyable movie (barring the nudity and I didn’t really get all the drug talk. I felt it was romanticised too much. Drugs actually aren’t cool kids), in fact it is more than enjoyable. It is nearly three hours long and it went by fast and was entertaining. However, Jordan Belfort is possibly one of the least likeable (real-life!) characters in movie history. He has absolutely no redeeming features. He is a complete bastard. Despite this, because he is played so brilliantly by DiCaprio he is also likable in a very weird way. You end up caring what happens to him but you resent yourself for it. These aren’t nice people and you will find yourself hoping Agent Patrick Denham nails them to the wall.

If you go and see The Wolf of Wall Street you will be entertained but you will also be left with a feeling of sexism, shallowness and emptiness.

 

Sick Of Seeing Naked Women On HBO? So Are These Funny Women

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Sick of all of the gender inequality when it comes to nudity on HBO? So are these very funny ladies. We laughed all the way through this video.

What do you think?

Michael Fassbender on Being Poor and Oscars.

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Michael Fassbender has done a fascinating interview with the Hollywood Reporter. You can read the full article at the link, but here are a few good quotes.

On how he survived years of struggle: “I would say to myself, I’m good enough. That became my mantra.”

ON GOING NUDE, MEETING SEX ADDICTS AND USING YOUTUBE TO HONE HIS CRAFT
Fassbender says what attracted him to the role of Brandon, a sex addict in the Fox Searchlight indie drama Shame– produced by See Saw Films and Alliance–was the chance to explore the desperate search for connection; playing a young Jung in A Dangerous Method allowed him to morph into a historical character. “I was a bit worried that I’d perhaps bitten off more than I could chew,” he says. “But I’m always interested in trying to investigate different personalities. I want to keep myself guessing and keep the fear element alive, so that I don’t get too comfortable.” Jeremy Thomas, a producer on Dangerous Method, says Fassbender who was director David Cronenberg’s first choice to play Jung read the script over and over again, even during production, something Thomas has never seen an actor do. “It’s one of his secret weapons,” he says. Fassbender says he’s grown deft at using YouTube to study accents (his own is Irish) or to watch a grainy interview with an elderly Jung. For Shame, he met with recovering sex addicts: “One man had the same intimacy issues that Brandon had, so it was very helpful to me, and I was very grateful that he opened up.” Additionally, he says there was no time to feel too self-conscious when shooting Shame, says Fassbender. It helped that director Steve McQueen kept the set intimate. “We moved very fast. We shot it in 25 days, so I kind of had to get over it and get on with it,” he says.

THE ACTOR ONCE LIVED WITH REJECTION, A HOLE IN HIS WINDOW
The son of two restaurant owners, Fassbender moved to London at 19 and attended the Drama Centre. “It took me a while to come to grips with how expensive London was. My parents helped me out, but we never had a lot of money,” he says. “So it was very sticky the first three or four years between paying drama school fees and surviving. The first place I lived was a studio I shared with a Brazilian girl. We weren’t seeing each other or anything, but I remember there was a big hole in the window and it was so cold in the winter.” Fassbender’s first acting role of note was in HBO’s Band of Brothers, which aired in 2001. He was confident it would lead to other offers. It didn’t. “I came to Los Angeles and did auditions for television. I made a terrible mess of most of them and I was quite intimidated,” he recalls. “I felt very embarrassed and went back to London. I got British television jobs intermittently between the ages of 23 and 27, but it was very patchy.” Between roles including a Guinness commercial (in which his character swims from Ireland to New York) and a one-off, Agatha Christie’s Poirot, he took odd jobs to survive, unloading trucks or bartending. He even did market research. “I had to call people who had filed complaints about the Royal Mail and see if they were happy with how their grievances were dealt with. Most of the time they weren’t,” he says. All along, he says, “My goal was for acting to become my main income. I would say to myself, ‘I’m good enough.’ That became my mantra.”

Robert Pattinson; ‘I don’t mind getting naked’.

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Robert Pattinson has told The Sun that he does not mind getting naked and stated that it is ‘more difficult for actresses’.

In an interview that should delight his many female fans the 26-year-old Twilight star says; “I don’t really have a problem with those scenes or nudity in general. I think it’s more complicated for actresses who are worried about how those scenes can be exploited by the media and how naked photos are constantly getting posted on the internet.”

Pattinson was talking about his role in Cosmopolis. The film is directed by David Cronenberg.

He says: “The sex scenes with Patricia [Patricia McKenzie] were more difficult.

“It was kind of strange but in the script we were supposed to climax at the beginning of the scene then have this discussion afterwards.

“But David had the brilliant and inspired idea to have us talk while we were having sex.”

He also said that he was grateful to be offered the role and his hopes of breaking away from the Twilight franchise.

He says: “When you’re part of an immensely popular film franchise like Twilight, it tends to overwhelm anything else you’re doing while those films are still part of the public consciousness.

“Now at least a film like The Hunger Games is gaining a lot of attention. That’s a good thing for me because I can break free from a certain perception that’s been formed about me through my character in Twilight.

“It’s ironic but I was offered the part in Cosmopolis on the last day of shooting on Breaking Dawn. It was an incredible feeling to be getting a call from David Cronenberg at that particular moment.

“It also reminds me that I should be very grateful for what the Twilight films have done for me.”

He also says; “It’s up to you to make the most out of your life.” Obviously a wise man.

Is The Film Industry Sexist?

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Is the film industry sexist? It is a broad question, and unfair to label everyone with the same tag. I think the answer is; less so. I think, more specifically, some people in the industry are sexist.

I recently had lunch with a director that had cast a female friend in something. My female friend has three children. The director offered me her part, and all the future work he was going to give her as ‘she could not be totally committed to her work’ as she had children. I was appalled and turned him down. What if I have children soon? I couldn’t work with him after that. The irony is that the director has FIVE children. But no one ever asks a man how he juggles work and kids.

Most of the castings I see are for men, the rest are for women, usually between 18-35, size 8-12 and the part usually requires nudity. I don’t do nudity. The most depressing thing about the movies I see are the amount of naked females in them. Rarely any naked men. What kind of message is this? That women are sexual objects?

Some castings require you to wear a bikini or ask that actresses are a specific weight. Age discrimination is rife, so much so that an actress who was the same age as me when we started out is now four years younger. I won’t lie about my age although I have been told to. It’s a stance against idiocy. I am still young, but I am cast younger. This is a problem. They can cast someone who looks like a teenager, or an actual teenager.

I am making a film, Prose & Cons. I am buying equipment and have been asking for a lot of advice. The most annoying thing about making the film so far is how condescending some of the men are in their answers. If I ask a general question on where to buy a microphone I get a lecture on what a boom is. I have worked in the film industry for eleven years. I know what a boom is, thanks mate.

But this is what happens when a ‘girl’ makes a film, or wants to be taken seriously. When she gets sick of the girlfriend roles, which become the mother roles and go on to be the hag roles. And the constant requests for nudity.

She says I have had enough and I am not taking it anymore, then she goes off and makes her own films while finding other amazing people who make films she wants to be in.

Frost Interviews: Angelina Jolie

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angelinajolieFrost loves Angelina Jolie, she’s talented and open, an amazing mother and a brilliant role model. For her searing honesty, read on….

On Brad Pitt: I met this amazing person, and we realized we had very similar views on how we wanted to live our lives. It’s happened quickly, with so many children. Yesterday, picking up the kids from school, Brad turned around in the car, and there were three of them. He couldn’t stop laughing. We love them and are having a great time.

On Brad with the kids:
“I keep telling Brad he owes me. He’s had a few months off in one of the most beautiful cities in the world with the children. And he’s such an artist and goes to the stone yards and the art exhibits, and loves being in such a cultural place.”

On her busy schedule: “I love it. I like being active, I love being busy and answering a lot of questions. And the children, well, that’s not work. It never is. They are always a pleasure.”

On being open with the media:
I like being able to be really honest. I’ll share everything always because it’s what I want. It helps me continue to do my work that way. And I’ve got nothing to hide and I like sharing with people and I like it when people come up to me and tell me things about themselves. So I’ll never change. And of course there are always going to be things that sound weird or aren’t explained so it’ll probably just get worse, but that’s okay.

On visiting Iraq: Well I came to the region about 6 months ago, I first went to Syria because I work with U.N.H.C.R. and there are 1.5 million refugees in Syria alone from Iraq and while I was there, I went inside and met with some internally displaced people. And this trip is to get a better picture of the internally displaced people and to discuss with the local government, with our government, with the NGOs and with local people, the situation and try to understand what is happening, because there are over 2 million internally displaced people and there doesn’t seem to be a real coherent plan to help them and there’s lots of good will and lot’s of discussion –but there seem to be a lot of uh — just a lot of talk at the moment and a lot of pieces need to be put together. So, trying to figure out what they are.

On plastic surgery: “I haven’t had anything done and I don’t think I will. But if it makes somebody happy then that’s up to them. I’m not in somebody else’s skin to know what makes them feel better about themselves. But I don’t plan to do it myself.”

On nudity: The thing is, [if] it’s important to the film. I never did one before because I thought I had to. It’s not a big deal to be naked. I think it’s a bigger deal to be emotionally naked. I think a woman’s breasts are a woman’s breasts; they don’t freak me out or shock me. It’s just not a big deal. I think it’s appropriate to the story.

On why she acts “I desperately need to communicate with people through films. It’s why I’m alive.”

On her first time working with Johnny Depp: “It turns out we are both a bit reclusive. . .That’s why our paths had never crossed — neither of us attends many parties or goes out very much. Neither of us seems to take ourselves too seriously. And maybe there’s something about being in a place in your life where your family is so central to you that you have a good perspective on it all . . . We got together as families . . . Brad, Vanessa and all the kids; that was lovely. Just family stuff.”