My blog rounds today brought me to this great post from a female Hollywood insider discussing the subtle but definite level of sexism that she and all women in the industry face. As I read, I found myself nodding, because I think the things she says apply to more than just the movie industry.

A few highlights:

I never thought of myself as a feminist until I came to work in Hollywood. I’m part of a generation and class of women who were reared on the rhetoric that we could grow up to do anything. At no point did gender figure in as a limitation, and the idea that it would for anyone who might judge my capabilities seemed completely ludicrous.

It was confusing when I heard or read about women’s complaints of gender discrimination — didn’t we figure all this stuff out in the ‘70s?

That’s what I believed. Until I came to work in Hollywood.

Substitute your company’s name for “Hollywood”? I’m not saying this will apply everywhere, but maybe more places than we’d like to think.

I heard a male agent once say that if the heroine of a script didn’t face higher stakes, he couldn’t see how someone would emotionally invest in her. OK, so the character is never chased to the edge of a cliff or anything, but plenty of successful movies exist with mediocre stakes.

Was anyone ever truly emotionally invested in whether Owen Wilson got it together in “Wedding Crashers”?

Definitely not.

Because of mentality [sic] like this, women suffer a severe drought of entertainment that speaks to us… The majority of the representations of women in film come from the minds of male directors. What we have reflected back to us are images of women filtered through the psyches of people who admit they are unable to comprehend them.

Bold emphasis added by me, because IT IS SO TRUE. Not just in Hollywood, but in literature (the industry I aim to be a part of). And music. And television. Okay TV’s still Hollywood, but you know what I mean.

Anyway, great post. Check it out.

(Found via Amanda the Aspiring TV Writer)