Sugar, Spice and Guts / A. O. Scott and Manohla Dargis

This article appeared in the New York Times in 2014

American mainstream cinema, a timid enterprise dependent on formulas and genres, can be mind-blowingly retrograde when it comes to women and girls. And while an occasional woman or girl rules the box office, too many of their on-screen sisters are sidelined or just left out of the picture.

Characters like Katniss Everdeen are changing girlhood and challenging tired stereotypes by not waiting for some guy to save the day: They’re saving themselves and their worlds, too. Yet Katniss, her screen sisters and the industry have a very long way to go. In one study the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media looked at 5,554 “distinct speaking characters” in 122 family movies rated G, PG or PG-13 that were released between 2006 and 2009. The institute discovered that only 29.2 percent of those roles were female, while a whopping 70.8 percent were male. In other words, there were 2.42 male characters for every female one. Put another way, there was Harry and Ron and then there was Hermione, the smartest girl in the class. Hermione ruled, but not nearly enough.

In the past, some actresses had a measure of power or at least staying power in Hollywood, but too many more were typecast as bratty sisters, dutiful daughters or sexpots, and then cast aside. And some of their most memorable characters were, like their adult counterparts, defined by hypersexuality or asexuality. [. . .] What has changed in the years since? Quite a lot off screen, if not nearly enough on: Nymphets and tomboys still show up, as do brainy, funny, scary and tough girls. The picture of girlhood at the movies has become an increasingly diverse, sometimes contradictory array of identities, including bold revisions of age-old archetypes and brave new heroines.