a fictional president and real statistics.

perusing the contents of the latest ms. magazine, i came across this article about geena davis. now, of course i'm hoping that geena davis is cool because a) she was in thelma and louise and b) she's the first female president of the united states, albeit in the fantasy land of network tv. turns out there's one more (far less circumstantial) reason to think she's cool - she's started up the See Jane program, which advocates for gender equity in media.

See Jane just released a study of gender breakdown and representation found in G-rated movies. according to ms.,

[See Jane's] Research showed that in 101 top-grossing G-rated movies released between 1990 and 2005, three out of four characters were male. Girls accounted for only 17 percent of the film’s narrators and 17 percent of the characters in crowd scenes. Only seven of the 101 movies were nearly gender-balanced, with a ratio of less than 1.5 males per 1 female character. “Although many people would argue that things seem to be getting better, our data shows that this is not the case,” says the principal investigator, Stacy L. Smith, an associate professor at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication.

i include smith's quote along with the stats because i think it's important to highlight the fact that there are numbers to back up the idea that we haven't really come a long way, baby. i've complained here before about people trying to pull me up short with the "relax, already, it's just a movie/tv show/advertisment/game/etc," like the fact that something is pop culture related means that it can have no great social and political import (thanks to my ipod and janis joplin for that phrase springing directly to mind). it is dangerous to assume that because something is coded as "entertainment" that it doesn't have long-lasting, far-reaching effects.

why? because our lives are absolutely subsumed by media. the average american is exposed to over 3,000 ads a day. 3,000 ads in one day!* and what we think of as our "entertainment" is pretty much a vehicle for advertisers to reach us - $40 billion a year in advertising revenue is generated for radio and tv alone, never mind movies, magazines, newspapers, online publications, etc.** we are literally stewing in this stuff, so if stereotypical gender roles are predominant in media, it means they're predominant in our lives. period.

on that note, i got to thinking about what i would commission as a study if i ran a program like See Jane. you know what it would be? the percentage of all car commericals that show a female driver and a male passenger. i'm willing to bet that it's tiny. microscopic. hardly visible to the human eye. maybe i'll write geena davis a letter.

*from jean kilbourne's can't buy my love: how advertising changes the way we think and feel.
**ditto.