Wage Gap – Bitch Flicks

Why Skittles’ ‘Bite-Size Horror’ Is the Perfect Metaphor for American Society

This guest post written by Lisette Voytko appears as part of our theme week on Women in Horror.

If you’re anything like me and millions of Americans, you tuned into the Yankees v. Indians ALDS game on Wednesday evening, October 11th. Despite the Yankees’ incredible comeback win, one commercial break might have left you fraught with tension.

Skittles, a brand that’s no stranger to oddball advertising, chose that night to debut the latest in Mars’ #BiteSizeHorror campaign, called “Floor 9.5.”

Skittles TV Commercial, ‘FOX: Bite Size Horror’

Running a full two minutes, instead of the usual 30-second slot reserved for commercials, viewers follow an unnamed female office worker on her way home from the office. Did you watch it? Good.

Because, broken down, frame by frame, the two-minute spot is a microcosm of what it’s like to live in the U.S. today. Here’s how it works: We open on our protagonist (Georgina Campbell, “the first Black actress to win a BAFTA“), a 20-something Black woman. It’s nighttime; she’s on her way home from a long day at the office. The clock strikes midnight.

We get a full-body glimpse of our protagonist, getting into the elevator. She’s carrying a heavy tote bag, and an office-appropriate trench coat. Notable here are her shoes: athletic trainers indicative of commuters everywhere. Judging by her lack of blazer, high heels, or other “power” attire, it’s safe to assume she’s a lower-level corporate denizen. She’s probably ambitious, given that she put in a ridiculously long day, and her exhaustion clearly shows.

Our protagonist steps into the elevator, and we get a good look at her haircut and blouse. Her hair is the kind of bob made popular by Taylor Swift. Her blouse is buttoned to the top button, a common styling choice for young urbanites. You could easily picture her hanging out at Coachella, or having after-work drinks at a hip bar. You can imagine she’s still paying off her student loans, having obtained a degree at a pricey private university in order to land her current job.

The elevator goes haywire, stranding our protagonist onto a Being John Malkovich-ish floor existing between levels 9 and 10. The doors open. A bald white man, dressed in a black suit, faces away from the camera.

“I need your help,” he says in a low voice. “I need your help.”
“What?” asks the protagonist, stepping out of the elevator.

This exchange, although quite basic, is reminiscent of the existing power dynamic between American men and women at work. But let’s go back to what the man is wearing. His suit is considered power attire, and by its formal nature, indicates he’s higher up on the corporate ladder than the protagonist. His baldness indicates that he’s probably older, which typically means he’s higher-ranking. And men are more likely to be promoted at work, and to sit in the C-suite. 30% more likely, in fact.

Keeping all of this in mind, the protagonist gets out of the elevator to help. Because it’s in her nature to do so. And the man directly asks for her help, because it’s in his nature do so, too. Although there are always exceptions to the rule, of course. And these gendered behaviors may be a result of socialization, or socialization in conjunction with nature. Here, she’s trying to help him. She wants to see his face, and understand why he’s here, and why he’s acting so strangely. He asks her to turn around, and she complies. Because, again, she wants to help (and get the hell out of there, too.) But the difference between these two people never becomes more apparent than this frame of their legs, turning in tandem. Her commuter shoes and cropped slacks are in contrast with the man’s suit trousers and highly-polished loafers. Those loafers look expensive, don’t you think?

A study conducted by the University of Zürich found “women were more likely to get a dopamine rush when doing something for others, while men are more likely to do so when they are acting in their own self-interest.” We cut to a wide shot of the man, having successfully convinced the protagonist to turn around, dashing towards the elevator – towards his presumed freedom. “I’m sorry!” he shouts, before the elevator doors close in the protagonist’s face. She’s stranded. And she looks terrified.

Women tend to apologize more than men, although the impetus behind each gender’s mea culpas are quite different. Women say sorry in an attempt to appear more likable, while men will do so in recognition of inconveniencing another. The man, by stranding our protagonist, has certainly inconvenienced her by acting in his own self-interest. That’s an apology well-warranted. And, you have to wonder: why didn’t he grab her hand on his run back to the elevator? Perhaps, even in dire circumstances, white male privilege still reigns.

Our final frame leaves our protagonist where the bald man started. “I need your help,” she says to the next victim: a bespectacled white man in shirt sleeves and a tie. Due to the gender wage gap, which especially impedes Black women and Latina women, he probably earns more money than our protagonist and he may have a higher position, too. And we know that she’s about to have her revenge, perpetuating the cycle on floor 9.5. Or maybe she won’t? Who’s to say the bespectacled man won’t just leave her there, standing still, frozen in perpetuity?

And why is this happening, in this specific office building? What is the purpose? Where is this sort of demonic possession coming from? And what happens to each victim after they screw over their successor?

There are many circumstances, specific to American culture in 2017’s place and time, that allegorize this story. For example:

Why this office building? Well, Americans are working longer hours than ever. Perhaps this is the price you pay for giving your life away to a corporation.
What’s the purpose of this? Americans are scientifically proven to be selfish.
Because of the gender wage gap in the U.S., women are paid 80% of what men make. Black women are paid 63% and Latina women are paid 54% of what white men make.
What happens to each victim? Assuming the elevator returns victims to their normal, 9-to-5 life, it’s not hard to believe they would go about their days with a higher degree of distrust and isolation than before. It’s symptomatic of the divisive political atmosphere permeating the U.S. since the 2016 election.

Director Toby Meakins told AdWeek that the concept of the “loop/hell,” that he and writer Simon Allen collaborated on, is “intended to be a metaphor for modern working life.” Meakins said that they wanted the ad to evoke Black Mirror as well as a “short Kafkaesque nightmare.”

But the “Kakfaesque nightmare” is the reality of social, political, and economic issues affecting society, imprinted on Americans’ collective unconscious. This commercial illustrates how deep the nightmare goes; that inequalities exist in the most dire, uncertain circumstances. And women are suffering the most for it. If our protagonist can’t be saved by her colleagues from an everlasting loop of hell, how can our entire gender at large expect fair, equitable treatment? Like it or not, #BiteSizeHorror is a bite-size slice of the current turbulence in American society.

Lisette Voytko is a freelance journalist living in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has appeared in Thrillist, The Video Game History Foundation, xoJane, Femsplain, and Task & Purpose. Find her on Twitter @lisettevoytko.

‘Pencils Down!’ Chronicles the 2007 WGA Strike and Raises Questions about Corporations in America

‘Pencils Down!’ chronicles the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike that largely brought television production to a standstill, through a combination of footage shot at the time, and reflective interviews shot in 2014-15. … In exploring the WGA strike, and the economics of how TV writers are compensated for their work, ‘Pencils Down!’ circles back to the same core issues of fairness and greed.

Written by Katherine Murray.

Sometimes, I get fooled into believing that film sets are happy, magical places where artists immerse themselves in the joys of their craft and feel nothing but a deep sense of satisfaction at doing the work they love. Then, I watch a documentary like Pencils Down! The 100 Days of the Writers Guild Strike and remember that, for most people, this is a workplace like any other.

Pencils Down! chronicles the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike that largely brought television production to a standstill, through a combination of footage shot at the time, and reflective interviews shot in 2014-15. In his director’s note, Brian S. Kalata – a member of the WGA – explains that he originally envisioned this content as part of a larger project about labor unions in the U.S., and it’s clear that the seeds of that idea are still here. Pencils Down! is most invested in explaining why Americans need unions to protect their interests at the bargaining table (which they do), and somewhat less invested in what the WGA strike, specifically, accomplished (which is, arguably, not much).

The early parts of the documentary explain what the WGA strike was about – officially, residuals for work distributed over the internet; unofficially, residuals for work distributed on home video and DVD. Like every strike, though, the motivating factor is a sense of unfairness – of being exploited, cheated, and taken advantage of. It’s weird to see middle-class writers on strike, but whether you’re in a blue or white collar job doesn’t matter – even monkeys stop working if they find out they’re making less than everyone else. There’s something about being cheated that insults our basic sense of dignity.

When the Sony hack in 2014 last year revealed the gender wage discrepancies between the actors on American Hustle, Bradley Cooper went on record as saying that what Amy Adams was paid for her work was “almost embarrassing” and that he hoped she would speak up. It’s that sense of embarrassment that underlies many disputes over pay. What happened to Amy Adams (and to many other actresses, particularly women of color) is familiar to women in many workplaces – the sickening moment you realize that, the entire time you thought you were doing just fine, you were really sitting at the bottom of the pay bracket while all your male coworkers got more. Right now, it’s fashionable to blame women for that – negotiate more, try harder, do a power pose in front of the mirror, be more like a dude – but the problem isn’t people who are too humble. The problem between studios and screenwriters is people who are too greedy and snatch up all the profit they can, as if they had earned it alone.

In exploring the WGA strike, and the economics of how TV writers are compensated for their work, Pencils Down! circles back to the same core issues of fairness and greed. In a nutshell, many people felt that the writers union had been tricked into accepting a bad deal on home video residuals and, even though that wasn’t on the table during the 2007 strike, their sense of justice wouldn’t allow them to be forced into accepting a similar deal on online distribution. It’s not a question of whether they’re being paid middle-class wages – it’s a question of whether the studio’s offer was insulting within the larger context of the industry. Not working in that industry, I don’t have an opinion about whether or not that was the case. But Pencils Down! is a reminder that, for people who do work in the entertainment industry, it’s a business like any other business and a workplace like any other workplace – the struggles that play out in office buildings and factories also play out in production studios, and the fundamental tensions between employers and employees are the same.

One interesting facet of the writer’s strike explored in the documentary is that the WGA was striking against corporations that owned the mainstream media outlets. Several people argue that that skewed coverage of the strike made it more difficult for the union to explain what was happening to outsiders. I don’t know whether or not that’s true, but it does seem like a conflict of interest.

Another interesting aspect of the strike is that, as the documentary draws to a close, the success of the strike seems unclear. No one is emphatically sure that the stress and lost wages were worth it, and no one is overjoyed with the contract the union eventually signed. In some ways, the most important questions raised by Pencils Down! are whether it’s worth it to strike if you ultimately lose the negotiation – or whether American workers can strike in an effective way anymore, when the toll on them is so much higher than the toll on corporations. Those aren’t questions Pencils Down! ultimately engages with – instead, the triumphant mood of the film’s first three quarters is followed by an uncertain finale as Kalata’s interviewees take an “it could be worse” perspective.

In his director’s note, Kalata also explains that, while he began with a list of over 100 potential interview subjects, almost no one was willing to talk to him on record. Of those who do appear in the film, actor Alan Rosenberg explains that, while he was very outspoken in support of the strike, it may have hurt his career, and he now regrets some of his words.

Workers’ rights, including the right to receive a fair share of the profits from one’s work, are an issue that’s, paradoxically, both public and private. Many people would rather not know if they’re being paid less than their coworkers or less than they’re worth, because they’d either have to live with a feeling of shame or risk the long term discomfort and possible job loss that follows from confrontation. In some ways, the most important part of Pencils Down! is Kalata’s unseen list of hundreds of interview subjects who declined to appear – the story of why it’s so gauche to talk about payment and how many people fear reprisal for speaking out.

Pencils Down! The 100 Days of the Writers Guild Strike is currently available on iTunes and other streaming services.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV and video games on her blog.

Feminist Highlights and Fails at the 2015 Oscars

This year’s Oscars lacked racial diversity with all 20 acting nominees being white. The overwhelming whiteness of the Oscars, which hasn’t been this egregious in nominating people of color since 1998, spurred a Twitter boycott and the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite created by April Reign. In addition to racial diversity, once again the Oscars lacked gender diversity. No women were nominated for director, screenplay (adapted or original), original score or cinematography. The snub of Ava DuVernay especially stung.

I usually eagerly anticipate the Oscars. As a huge cinephile, I love seeing films, actors, and filmmakers celebrated. But this year, I dreaded them.

The Oscars may be the most visible celebration of filmmaking in the U.S. and possibly the world. This is why they matter. Whether we agree or not, they signify what films are collectively deemed important in our society.

The Oscars often overlook female filmmakers — only four women (no women of color) have ever been nominated for Best Director, only one has won (Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker) — and women-centric films. It was disappointing to see that all eight of the Best Picture nominees were written and directed by men, except for Selma, which was directed and co-written by Ava DuVernay, a woman of color. Each of the films revolves around men as the protagonists. However, Selma is a notable exception for spotlighting not only Martin Luther King Jr. but the vigilance and dedication of Black women and Black men in the fight for equality.

Lack of diversity amongst the nominations disappointed, and racism and sexism often tainted the evening. Yet powerful moments emerged during the awards ceremony.

Labeled as “the most feminist moment” of the night by many writers and those on Twitter, Patricia Arquette advocated for equal pay and women’s rights during her acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress for Boyhood:

“To every woman who give birth to a taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s rights. It’s our time to have wage equality, once and for all. And equal rights for women in the United States of America.”

Yes, yes, a thousand times YES. Patricia Arquette’s speech was a powerful feminist declaration condemning the gender pay gap and the need for wage equality. Women earn 78 percent less than men for the same job. But women of color earn far less. Black women earn 64 percent less, Indigenous women earn 59 percent less and Latina women earn 54 percent less than white men. Hearing the words “wage equality” and “women’s rights” uttered on a national broadcast delights me. Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lopez excitedly cheering in the audience was the icing on the cake.

Arquette elaborated backstage, mentioning the ageism comingled with sexism that women actors face: “The truth of it is the older an actress gets, the less money she makes.” She is absolutely right. Male actors earn more than women. After the age of 34, women actors earn far less than their male colleagues. But unfortunately, here’s where Arquette’s speech unravels:

“It’s time for all the women in America and all the men who love women and all the gay people and all the people of color that we’ve fought for, to fight for us now.”

Sigh. Why couldn’t she have just stopped? My initial excitement faded to disappointment, irritation, and anger.

Her statement implies that LGBT people and people of color have achieved equality. They haven’t. LGBT justice and racial justice still have far to go. It blatantly ignores coalition building that has happened across movements. Arquette excludes women of color and queer women with her statement. Women have multiple, intersecting identities. To ignore that fact erases many women’s existence. When feminists talk about women’s rights, we should not be claiming, either overtly or covertly, “women” equals straight, white, cis women. We white women need to do a much better job to make feminism an intersectional, inclusive movement.

Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne won Best Actress and Best Actor for playing people with disabilities. Each actor mention ALS and Alzheimer’s in their acceptance speeches. Moore said: “I’m thrilled we were able to shine a light on this disease. … “Movies make us feel seen and not alone.” However, The Theory of Everything has been accused of being guilty of “inspiration porn” and using a person with a disability as “Oscar bait.”

Julianne Moore was absolutely outstanding in Still Alice. A chameleon, she melted into the complex, nuanced role. It was also great to see a woman win for a film revolving around a female protagonist. Considering the ageism of Hollywood and the Oscars, I appreciated seeing a woman over the age of 50 win. We need more roles for women in general but particularly women of color, queer women, older women, and women with disabilities.

Suicide was discussed in two acceptance speeches. Dana Perry, the co-director of Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 which won for Best Documentary Short, shared the tragedy about her son who committed suicide:“We should talk about suicide out loud.” Best Screenplay winner Graham Moore (The Imitation Game) revealed his own suicide attempt:

“When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself because I felt weird, and I felt different, and I felt like I did not belong. … So I would like for this moment to be for that kid out there who feels she’s weird, or she’s different or she doesn’t fit in anywhere. Yes, you do. I promise you do. Stay weird, stay different.”

Not only did these two heartbreaking speeches illuminate suicide, but they ultimately gave a positive message, that for people suffering, you are not alone.

Selma may not have been honored with all the awards it deserved. But a tribute to the film and to racial justice was depicted in Common and John Legend’s powerful performance of “Glory” from Selma. Accompanying the uplifting yet searing lyrics, they visually recreated the march in Selma onstage. In their passionate acceptance speech for Best Song, Common spoke about the historic bridge in Selma where the civil rights march took place.

“This bridge was once a landmark of a divided nation. But now it’s a symbol for change. The spirit of this bridge transcends race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, social status. … This bridge was built on hope, welded with compassion, and elevated by love for all human beings.”

John Legend highlighted institutional racism, incarceration of Black men and the prison industrial complex.

“Nina Simone said it’s an artist’s duty to reflect the times in which we live. … Selma is now because the struggle for justice is right now. We live in the most incarcerated country in the world. There are more Black men under correctional control today than were under slavery in 1850.”

Selma may be a biopic of an iconic civil rights leader. Yet as legend says, it remains extremely relevant, a reflection of the racism and white supremacy happening currently with the harrowing murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and the activism in Ferguson and with #BlackLivesMatter. It was crucial to hear Legend discuss the pernicious racism of our criminal justice system. Sadly, the lack of applause for his statements by an audience often deemed liberal was extremely disconcerting.

But perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised at the audience’s reaction, especially as many in Hollywood look the other way when it comes to racism and abuse of women. I cannot fully express my disgust at seeing Sean Penn, an abuser of women, as a presenter onstage. He made a racist joke when announcing Birdman, directed by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, as the Best Picture winner: “Who gave this son of a bitch his green card?” How lovely to see racism and xenophobia at the end of the Oscars. Sigh. Unfortunately the racism didn’t stop there.

Within the first few minutes of the show, Neil Patrick Harris said, “Tonight we celebrate tonight’s best and whitest, oh I mean brightest.” Here’s the thing: I love when a celebrity shines a light on inequality or injustice. But the “joke” felt more like a way to acknowledge the Academy’s glaring racism rather than actually calling them out and holding them accountable. It lets Hollywood off the hook for not taking measures to increase diversity. Harris also tokenized accents, did a “joke” where Black actor David Oyelowo read a denouncement of the Annie remake starring Quvenzhané Wallis and had Octavia Spencer “watch” his ballot predictions box as if she was his servant.

Thankfully, Iñárritu took the opportunity in his acceptance speech to counter Penn’s racism advocating for immigrant justice. He dedicated his Oscar for Best Picture to his “fellow Mexicans” and Mexican immigrants. He is the second Latino to win Best Director and the first Latino to win as producer for Best Picture. Iñárritu spoke of the need to build a new government in Mexico and for the need for rights for immigrants:

“…I just pray they can be treated with the same dignity and respect of the ones who came before and built this incredible immigrant nation.”

What this disjointed awards show accentuated to me is the need for an intersectional lens in everything we do: our daily lives, activism, making media and consuming media. We can’t truly claim a milestone a victory if it only benefits wealthy, white, straight, cis, able-bodied women. We can’t call truly call ourselves feminists if we ignore the plight of those more marginalized or oppressed than ourselves.

Equal pay for women (along with highlighting the need for intersectional feminism), racial justice, mass incarceration, suicide, rights for people with disabilities and immigrant rights – all of these took center stage. Now if only the Academy had been so radical and the Oscar nominees had reflected such diversity.

Megan Kearns is Bitch Flicks’ Social Media Director and a Staff Writer, a freelance writer and a feminist vegan blogger. She tweets at @OpinionessWorld.

The Bechdel Test and Women in Movies

The original Bechdel Test

This piece by Magda Knight originally appeared at Mookychick and is cross-posted with permission.

A 1985 comic strip by US cartoonist Alison Bechdel, Dykes to Watch Out For, features a character who says they’d only go to see a movie on three conditions:

The film has at least two named women in it

Who talk to each other at some point in the film

About something other than a man

The idea of the Bechdel Test caught on, and you can now visit the Bechdel Test Movie List, a giant community-run resource that catalogues over 4,000 films which have women talking to each other about not-man things. I highly recommend you check out it out. Partly because it’s really interesting and eye-opening (Straw Dogs just makes it), but mainly because you’ll see passionate and lengthy discussions of the merits of My Little Pony: Equestria Girls and whether the lead females, being ponies, pass the test. AND OH, THEY DO. THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS IS RESTORED.

My Little Pony: Equestria Girls

How do I feel about the validity of the Bechdel Test? My only reservation about it is that I think it’s terribly neat, and I fear tidy things because, as Erma Bombeck said, “My idea of tidy is to sweep the room with a glance.” Tidy is not something I demand of my hair, my house, my film theory or my beliefs. Tidy is rigid, and life ebbs and flows like a vast, floppy, wet and ultimately quite messy ocean teeming with potential and things with too many legs and other things, also with probably too many legs, all of which I’d honestly rather not have to tidy up. If you’re something with that many legs, you can tidy up after yourself. I’ll be on the sofa reading a book.

Einstein believed the universe would eventually boil down to just one universal constant, but I don’t even think art can be condensed into one neat little set of rules, however awesome they are. After all, Fight Club is one of many excellent movies that fails the Bechdel Test, and I’m not going to harsh on Marla the Magnificent’s buzz for not talking to any women in the movie. Hot damn, Marla.


Helena Bonham Carter as Marla in Fight Club

Bride Wars, on the other hand, gets a flying pass, and it’s a hideously cynical chick flick about two “best friends” who have sculpted their life ambitions around weddings. They discover they’re booked into the same hotel for a wedding on the same day and turn on each other like rabid dogs and dye each other’s hair blue without asking first because HEY THAT’S WHAT WOMEN BEST FRIENDS DO. The first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club (unless it’s to gush about the wonderfully dark things it says about the human condition). The first rule of Bride Wars is, obviously, to just not watch it.

What I really do love about the Bechdel Test is the wonderful questions it encourages us to raise. I think it’s excellent for filmmakers and screenwriters to have in the back of their minds: Hey, wouldn’t it be nice if this film I’m creating had some women who talked to each other? Whose lives didn’t triangulate around men like bogeys on a radar screen?

Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson in Bride Wars

A study by the University of California looking at the 100 most successful box office films in 2012 found that just under 30% of the speaking roles were for women, and nearly 30% of those had revealing clothes, a figure which jumped to 56% for teenage girls. And never mind the clothes–how many of those speaking roles were for first or second billing, I wonder, and how many of them involved saying something other than, “We showed each other our private parts yesterday so let’s talk about where this relationship is headed, Dave,” or “Honey, of course you’ll make it through the robot jungle alive. I knitted you a robot handkerchief for good luck; now kiss me, you great big loveable robot fool”?

Helen Mirren

2013 has been a particularly tricky and vocal year for women in films and visual entertainment:

In March, Helen Mirren publicly criticised Sam Mendes for not including any women filmmakers in his list of inspirations and spoke out against the lack of women in the film industry when accepting her Empire Legend Award. BOOM.

Professor Maggie Gale of the University of Manchester revealed to the Daily Telegraph that more plays were written by women in the Sufragette era than there are today.

Thandie Newton told CNN how she’d been forced to have a movie camera stuck under her skirt as a teenager for a screen test. And how the resulting footage had been played to other people privately. Eurgh.

Audrey Tatou (Amelie, The Da Vinci Code) told the Radio Times that she decided not to pursue a Hollywood career because she did not want “every single millimetre” of her body being scrutinised, because the Hollywood approach to an actress’s figure was “unforgiving.” If even Audrey Tatou feels she can’t aspire to be Audrey Tatou, what chance does a young female actress following in her footsteps have?

It’s not just western cinema, either; Aruna Irani has spoken out against the lack of good roles for middle-aged women in Bollywood, saying, “There is no role for female characters, especially of my age group. Actresses like Hemaji, Rakhiji and Moushmiji, they all are just at home. And if sometimes they get the chance to be part of a film, then that is for three or four scenes.”

Audrey Tatou

It’s almost a case of: if you’re a young and talented actress, you better make the most of those apples in your cheeks while you’ve still got them, apple-face, because only three women of your generation will get to be Maggie Smith or Helen Mirren, and you’re going to be expected to fight other actresses tooth and nail–almost as if you’d booked a wedding in the same place on the same day–to be one of them. And that percentage of women with speaking parts in film? The number’s been going down since 2009, not up. Speaking roles for women in film are currently at their lowest in five years.

Sony’s Amy Pascal, who ranks 14th on Forbes‘ 20 Most Powerful Women in Business list, gave a really interesting interview on closing the pay gap between men and women in Hollywood, and why women get paid less than men. I literally couldn’t figure out how to fit that into this article tidily (see above), so I’m just going to throw it in there. Enjoy!

Sony’s Amy Pascal

If we take some positives from this…

If you’re creating a film or play, consider the Bechdel Test. Could your script do with more speaking parts for women? Even older women? About non-man things?

If you’re not creating a film or play but have always wanted to, give it a go. There are more Jane Campions and Kathryn Bigelows out there in the filmosphere, and one of them might be you.

If you’re an actress, ALL POWER TO YOU. Things will be addressed, and they will get better. If it gets to the point where you’re giving an interview to CNN or accepting an Empire Legend Award? It’s not just acknowledgement for your talent and hard work, it’s a platform. If you speak out, people will hear you…

@MagdaKnight is the Co-Founding Editor of Mookychick. Her YA fiction and other writings have been published in anthologies and in 2000AD. She likes you already, so Email her and say hi, or visit her blog. She is on Google+.