What's wrong with the portrayal of central female characters in movies?

Ross Putman has been sharing the lines one by one through an account called @femscriptintros, quoting verbatim but changing every character’s name to Jane.

“JANE, 28, athletic but sexy. A natural beauty. Most days she wears jeans, and she makes them look good.”

“Like draping the Venus de Milo in a burlap dress, Jane’s sensational natural beauty fights through her plain blue Ann Taylor outfit.”

“JANE stands next to it (30s) dressed in a paramedic’s uniform — blonde, fit, smokin’ hot.”

“JANE (late 20s) sits hunched over a microscope. She’s attractive, but too much of a professional to care about her appearance.”

The list goes on, every script referring the beauty. It’s compelling reading.

It has struck a chord with everyone in the business, from writers and actors to producers and directors.

Cheryl Strayed, writer of the book that Reese Witherspoonmade into hit movie Wild, tweeted: “Laugh/sobbing as I read this feed tweeting ways women are introduced in scripts.”

Desperate Housewives actor Dana Delany tweeted: “Go follow @femscriptintros to see how female roles are introduced in scripts. It’s both unreal & how scripts get sold. 2 problems.”

Viewers have questioned whether model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley looks like she’s 40 weeks’ pregnant in Mad Max: Fury Road.Source:Supplied

Matilda star Mara Wilson joined in with: “‘Why don’t you act anymore, Mara’ ... See @femscriptintros.”

Fittingly, Putman was beaten to the idea by a number of women, but has been more successful than them, gaining 58,900 followers in the past week. Anonymous actor Miss L, who has been running the Tumblr castingcallwoe since 2013, has just 12,600 followers, reported “Geek Girl Culture” site The Mary Sue.

“She doesn’t like being objectified & is very pretty,” reads one of the posts she has shared from real casting calls.

Another Tumblr on similar lines is terriblecasting, which features real casting calls for female actors, including: “Michelle is a body building protege. Her physique is admired throughout the gym and her work ethic is unmatched. She’s also dating a rock star which causes friction in her life. Does she concentrate on competing or be the loyal girlfriend.”

The cumulated effect is to lay bare a sleazy industry in which cliches, sexism and stereotyping appear to be the norm.

Desperate Housewives Dana Delany said way women were introduced in Hollywood films was “unreal”.Source:AP

Matilda actor Mara Wilson applauded the Twitter account.Source:Instagram

“Over time, I started to just notice that there were so many scripts engaging in this casual misogyny, so much that it wasn’t an outlier. It was a pattern,” Putman told the Huffington Post.

“She’s attractive first, intelligent second. Second of all, why do we need to say that? It doesn’t help you describe a character. It’s just vague, bad writing. But it’s also subtly sexist.

“If you feel like, ‘Oh, I’m sending this script to another guy, and then a guy is going to be a director, and a guy is going to be the writer, and a guy is going to be producer, and a guy’s going to be the cinematographer and the only women involved are going to be unimportant’ then this kind of thing continues to proliferate.”

Meanwhile, writer Ester Bloom has attacked Hollywood’s portrayal of pregnant women on Long Reads. She pointed out that model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley looked nothing like a typical mother-to-be at 40 weeks in Mad Max: Fury Road, hailed for its depiction of a strong woman in Charlize Theron’s character.

“Starlets allow the paparazzi to intimidate them into a digital version of what used to be called ‘confinement’, rather than challenge Hollywood’s idea of what pregnant women should look like,” wrote Bloom, with a handful of notable exceptions including Kim Kardashian.

Jezebel published a story in 2011 chronicling the history of “bump watch”, in which “tabloids go mad, accusing everyone of pregnancy” using arrows and phrases such as “baby or burrito?”

There appears to be some work to do in making our female role models match the women watching the movies.