"Written By A Man": Women Are Calling Out 30 Unrealistic Female Character Tropes They See In Books And Movies | Bored Panda

2022-03-11 09:00:35 By : Ms. Katrina Yu

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The perfect suburban '50s housewife. The wholesome girl next door. And, of course, the bimbo. I think it's safe to say we've seen one too many of these tropes on the big screen.

Interested in finding out which productions have resorted to them (and other similar ones), Reddit user Mikess314 made a post on r/AskWomen, saying: "What movie featuring female characters was clearly made without a single woman being involved?"

Turns out, people think there's no shortage of them. Continue scrolling to check out how everyone responded.

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Jurrasic World. Let's please stop it with 'frigid, stuck up corporate woman taken down a peg by rough and tumble guy with big heart and then falls in love with him'. Please, I'm begging everyone in Hollywood. Stop this madness.

I am so f*****g sick of that relationship! It's in about 75% of the films ever made, I swear.

Harley Quinn’s dumb outfit in Suicide Squad. No woman is going to dress like that for anything physical. Those short shorts would ride up your bum and you’d break your ankle in the stilettos. There’s a huge difference with the outfits in Birds of Prey which was written, directed and produced by women. High rise denim shorts, sports bra and a chunky wedge (or trainers I think?) is a way better outfit for causing mayhem.

When I cause mayhem I'm in sweats sneakers and a sports bra so they don't hurt when I run. Need comfort for the chaos.

Almost every female super heroes. What woman in her right mind would go into battle breast out, legs bare, hair flying all over the place in full nails and makeup? It doesn’t matter if it’s a tv program, a movie, anime, live action, cartoon, etc…

And if she's wearing armor, it leaves most of the vital organs exposed.

Not a movie, but the episode of Game of Thrones where Gillie decides to take Sam's virginity 5 seconds after he saves her from being r**ed and we all know that nothing makes a woman hotter than almost being r**ed by gruesome strangers. Oh, wait, no, it's just that a bunch of dudes decided that Sam deserved a "prize" for his heroic acts and so they wrote in the woman's vagina as the prize without putting any thought into what an actual human female would do in that situation. This one is especially bad because in a previous season there was a well-written scene where a female character specifically states "A woman who has just escaped a r**e won't want to have sex immediately after. You should have known you were being set up because of that." So not only where there no women involved in the new scene, there was no one who bothered to read what was actually written in previous seasons. The latter is almost more offensive LOL.

The scene where Jaime tells Tyrion that he should have known he was being set up is straight from the books. The scene where Gilly takes Sam's virginity was made up for the show. It's just another example of how the showrunners simply could not match the writing quality of the books. Everything after Season 3 is just middling fan fiction.

Movies where women are running for their lives in high heels. Movies where prostitutes easily fall in love with their johns Movies that get basic female anatomy wrong. And to be specific, Star Wars: The Revenge Of The Sith when Padme “loses the will to live” after having 2 beautiful, healthy babies, because shes so sad about losing Anakin. Yeah, because as we know, Mothers are never motivated by their children and don’t really want to protect them. If they’re boyfriend has a tantrum, they just lay down and die.

My theory is that Palpatine used some Sith method to kill her, because she had to die if he was going to make Anakin into his slave. If she'd dumped the idiot and decided to live as a single mother, he wouldn't anve been able to deliver the final mindfuck.

Another one: when Jennifer Lawrence dyes her hair platinum blonde with boxed hair dye in Red Sparrow. As any fake blonde will tell you it’s a really time consuming and tricky process. Not something you do in 10 minutes in a bathroom. Pretty sure any Cosmo Girl could tell you that

I love the ones where the girl with long hair, has to change her appearance, so she hacks at it with an old pair of scissors and ends up looking stunning with a cut that a top salon would be proud of!

Books where women are incredibly aware of what their boobs are doing and how they feel all the time....

You do not have sentient boobs?

Any birth scene where the mother is just a little sweaty but totally glowing and happy and wide awake after a 20-hour labor, and looks like she was never pregnant at all as soon as they leave the hospital.

Also, a number of kids' shows presumably tailored for girls (stuff like Instant Mom on Nick), and tv sitcoms for that matter, in which the mother is constantly wearing high heels at home, makeup, the whole armor..., while the guys are are laid back in their pajamas and slippers. I am a guy but that is so idiotic and sexist.

Books where the female characters never interact with each other or it’s always negative/catty/competitive.

I cant lie, my mom is this way though.. She wont converse with chicks because these are the only type of toxic women she's ever been up against... In her words "Women are bitches"

In Age of Ultron where Black Widow is talking about how she's a monster but not because she's an assassin — just because she's infertile. WTF?

Didn't she she bring up the infertility up at the moment when she and Banner realized they were about to get serious? That's a reasonable time to discuss things that would be dealbreakers for some.

The first few Avengers movies with Scarlet Johansson as Black Widow. It seems like she was just there to be eye candy and not really have much of a character. She has hinted a bit at this, that she put her foot down on a scene where they had her in a cute tennis outfit for no reason. It was nice to see them give her more of a character throughout the series.

A cute tennis outfit??? I can't even imagine how the writers tried to pass that off as 'plot-related'.

There’s a line in a book about a lady taking so long to pee because the pee gets lost in her confusing lady maze inside.

oml i remember this one it was on bp a while ago lol

Every single movie Megan Fox was ever in. Transformers… oh my god that was rough. Michael Bay practically shoved the camera up her a**hole and just told her to act hot, but then tried to say it was feminist because she… knew about cars? Lol. Jennifer’s body is a whole other beast. Great movie clearly made by and for women, and the marketing just said “Megan fox is in it, so let’s make it look like it’s just a sex movie with a sexy lady and market it to the COMPLETELY wrong audience.”

Michael Bay is notoriously known for shoving women into eye-candy roles. Have you seen Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in Transformers? It was gag-worthy.

Revenge of the nerds. What would a women do if she realized she has been tricked into having sex with another man without her consent? Keep having sex with him, of course

Even in the 80s that was considered rape and gross but somehow was used as comedy for men taking revenge. The start of the incel movement before Reddit

All the girls in “Spring Breakers” ... written by Harmony Korine. There’s something unsettling about a middle aged guy writing through the eyes of college girls. Vanessa Hudgen’s character says, “Seeing all this money makes my pussy wet”.

IF SHE IS DESCRIBED AS THE “cool girl” F**K THAT F**K THAT F**K THAT!!! NO GIRL EXISTS LIKE THAT. One that is the perfect amount interested in “male things” while still maintaining the PERFECT amount of femininity. Never gets mad. Is never too clingy. That s**t. watch the cool girl monologue from Gone Girl. She explains it perfectly.

My dad: "You should wear cuter clothes, like your sister." Me: "To change shock absorbers?" ---- real convo, never left my memory. Like, wtf, is it silk or tulle for auto repair?

Look up the bechdel test, it's hilarious watching movies and seeing if they pass. Spoiler alert, mass majority don't.

It asks whether a work features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added.

Not a movie (I know, sorry), but Breaking Bad. Love the series, but every female character is insufferable, and the way Skyler’s character is mishandled is particularly bothersome. She is written like a man’s idea of the nagging overbearing shrew of a wife, and is almost universally hated because of it. Meanwhile, I’ve never understood what exactly people wanted from her. A pregnant woman’s terminally ill husband starts acting shady as f**k...how else would anyone react in that situation? But instead of writing her very understandable suspicion with some depth, they basically said “Pfft. Wives are such a drag, amirite?”. And then she cheats. This may seem a weird detail to fixate on, but I really hated that they had her smoking during her pregnancy. I assume the intention was to show how badly the situation was affecting her, but considering how unsympathetic they made her overall, it just further poisoned the audience against her.

Yeah that was crazy the way men attacked the actual actress for her portrayal in a fictionalized tv show. She got rape and death threats and her career suffered.

Tbh most of my what I thought were said so I'll say the 50 shades series (and there was woman involved if you can believe that)

Yeah, a woman wrote the original books. A woman who'd never done any of the things she wrote about, I assume.

Wait, is twilight a serious book/movie?? You mean you actually have to take it seriously?? it is not like a parodie, a sattire, a bad joke or the bad example of "how not to" write or something??

Barbarella with Jane Fonda. She’s supposed to save the universe but is so helpless all the time and these men have to come and save her and more. She’s a massive feminist now and has commented that it’s not her proudest work

WOT? Barbarella is cult classic.

There's a film known amongst folks who track down, "so bad it's good" movies (like The Room) called Samurai Cop. There are many, many things wrong with this movie (obviously) but the scene where a nurse flirts with the main character makes me wonder if the director had ever seen a woman flirt, ever.

dont_f**kin_die Report

Warning: DO NOT watch Porky's

Unpopular opinion but, Jenny in Forest Gump.

She's only written to move the male character along. She's reduced to her reproductive organs the entire time. It's annoying over done horrible crappy trope to use a woman being raped being murdered tortured giving birth etc only to make the male character seem deeper. Most of the time the woman has no lines and some movies she's just a picture or a flashback can't even see her face.

Charlie’s Angels (2000 & 2003) just ooze the male gaze

Hey, what about the les gaze?!?!?

The worse. She is not badass at all. She is an spoiled entitled brat making tantrums and iresponsibly destroying everything. (Yes, scowling a that terracotta warriors scene, it made me hate Angelina Jolie to this day). She is the average dumb male indiana jones, with big boobs, shorts, heavy make up, guns, big boobs and zero brain or empathy. Did I say big boobs?

I hate movies where women are portrayted as a 'sex' object... The movie that features female characters but without a single woman involved: Jason Bourne (2016). Its target audiance is clearly men. But there are several female into it. It seems like at every explosion in the movie. There is a women flying into the air with a lot of blood involved.

Crank. That one scene where Jason Statham forces his girlfriend to have sex with him out in the street where everyone is watching and even though she VERY much objects, he just keeps going (because of the plot) and eventually she starts enjoying it. Like, what?

Although I love the series, Indiana Jones.

Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) was a strong independent character.

Ok people will laugh but I frigging love the hallie berry catwoman movie. It's one of my comfort movies. My daughter loves it too. Yes it's silly but it was supposed to be

Pulp Fiction. Hate to say it. Actually, I don’t. It’s for sure Pulp Fiction.

I don’t think that any of the characters are exactly realistic or unproblematic in Pulp Fiction, even characters who hardly have any screen time. They’re cliches and caricatures, that’s kind of the point though. Big fan of the film.

Note: this post originally had 79 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.

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Rokas is a writer at Bored Panda with a BA in Communication. After working for a sculptor, he fell in love with visual storytelling and enjoys covering everything from TV shows (any Sopranos fans out there?) to photography. Throughout his years in Bored Panda, over 235 million people have read the posts he's written, which is probably more than he could count to.

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Im tired of rape in movies so sick of it. Watching the queens gambit and I was waiting for the horrific rape scene. Was so frigging happy when that did not happen. 62million people watched that show it just proves a well written female lead movie makes for great viewing too not just the same old stuff over and over.

It should never be a part of film. Hot take I know but there are certain crimes we do not show on film because it is too vile this should be one of them. And if it is it should never be a voyeur POV.

Hot take how about zero murder on-screen in films? OR is death and gruesome murder ok? Just asking. I agree with your comment, just want to know what else we're cutting out, because for me murders are just as vile.

Yeah I hate all gratuitous violence but the rape scenes seem especially heinous bc they're written for the male gaze and have nothing at all to do w the storyline most of the time.

I find murder, rape, and exploding buildings distressing. And yet...

i hate the stereotype that the main female character denys that she likes the male main character the whole film then at the end the male character forcibly kisses her and the woman enjoys it! always pisses me off whenever i see it

This is how we all need to analyse movies: the Bechdel Test. To assess if women have an actual purpose in a film: (1) it has to have at least two women in it, who (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man. When you watch films with these criteria, you find that at least 75% of Hollywood movies fail the Bechdel test.

What about the opposite of that? And if the main characters are guys, what would you think if it didn't have any women? But I see what you're saying for SOME

Im tired of rape in movies so sick of it. Watching the queens gambit and I was waiting for the horrific rape scene. Was so frigging happy when that did not happen. 62million people watched that show it just proves a well written female lead movie makes for great viewing too not just the same old stuff over and over.

It should never be a part of film. Hot take I know but there are certain crimes we do not show on film because it is too vile this should be one of them. And if it is it should never be a voyeur POV.

Hot take how about zero murder on-screen in films? OR is death and gruesome murder ok? Just asking. I agree with your comment, just want to know what else we're cutting out, because for me murders are just as vile.

Yeah I hate all gratuitous violence but the rape scenes seem especially heinous bc they're written for the male gaze and have nothing at all to do w the storyline most of the time.

I find murder, rape, and exploding buildings distressing. And yet...

i hate the stereotype that the main female character denys that she likes the male main character the whole film then at the end the male character forcibly kisses her and the woman enjoys it! always pisses me off whenever i see it

This is how we all need to analyse movies: the Bechdel Test. To assess if women have an actual purpose in a film: (1) it has to have at least two women in it, who (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man. When you watch films with these criteria, you find that at least 75% of Hollywood movies fail the Bechdel test.

What about the opposite of that? And if the main characters are guys, what would you think if it didn't have any women? But I see what you're saying for SOME

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