My three daughters, my niece, my sister, and I LOVED The Croods.

From beginning to end, this movie is fantastic. The characters are great and the animation is gorgeous. The Croods is the best ensemble animated movie since The Incredibles, and like that classic, The Croods is about a family that is populated with strong female characters.

The fabulous family of Croods.

The Croods is narrated by a female. That is a true rarity in movies made for children. Who tells the story is hugely important and leaving females out of this role has all kind of bad effects. Everyone needs to be able to write her own story.

Not only is Eep the narrator, but, and this is truly amazing, she is not a Minority Feisty! Her family is comprised of a mom, a granny, a baby sister, and then her father and brother.

That’s right, four females to two males! This gender ratio is almost unheard of in mainstream movies for children.

There’s another male main character who comes on the scene: Guy. But even with this addition, the gender ratio still tips in female favor.

There are various animals and magical creatures, but their parts are small, and the genders mixed, so I feel confident we don’t have to deal with the Minority Feisty issue at all in this movie.

Speaking of creatures, in the last scene of the movie, Eep is shown not “riding bitch.” She is on a flying creature, in front, with Guy behind her.

I do have a couple complaints. Eep’s outfit sucked. While the clothing of all the other characters covered them to their knees or more, Eep’s dress barely skimmed her ass. There were actual panty shots. For that, I am deducting one H.

Eep, main character from The Croods.

Aside from Eep’s outfit, her look is great. She is a cavewoman and she looks it, with big arms, muscular legs, and bushy hair. Her armpits, shown in the movies first shot, are conspicuously hairless, an issue that could’ve been easily solved by giving her more clothing coverage, but whatever.

Eep refers to herself as a “caveman” and that term is used to describe her family a few times in the movie. At least that gendered word seemed really out of place, I hope not only to me. With all the ways this movie defied gender stereotypes, couldn’t they change that word to cavepeople?

Much of the movie is battle for leadership between the dad and Guy. I admit, I was pretty nervous when Guy came on the scene. As with Hotel Transylvania, I was concerned the story would morph from a father-daughter to father-son theme. Though in some places, it teetered, the movie stayed faithful to keeping Eep and her dad the central focus.

I liked the addition of Guy. Clearly, he admires Eep for her strength and vision. He is enamored of her without coming off as a wimp, a loser, or relinquishing his own attractiveness. I liked that Eep is shown as powerful and also in love. Defying another limiting gender stereotype for females in the fantasy world, being strong doesn’t mean Eep has to end up alone.

I think the Granny made a sexist comment, calling the dad and the brother “girls” at one point as an insult, but that seems so out of character and incongruent with the movie that I’m hoping I’m wrong.

The Croods is a movie about the strength and importance of family. Of course, “family values” is a common theme in children’s media, but too often, to communicate this bond, female ambition is stereotyped and sacrificed. Most recently, we saw this in the infinitely sexist Escape From Planet Earth which made the point with a “good” stay-at-home mom versus a wicked, bitter, delusional, and lonely working woman.

The Croods did something different, showing the value of family by illustrating that each member’s role and identity is dynamic and changing. People need to grow. Pigeonholing identities gives only the illusion of strength.

One final factor that I adored about the movie is how it showed the power of the narrative and the importance of a female protagonist. The father and Guy both told stories to the family about a female character who was obviously based on Eep. These stories mirrored the thematic basis and structure of the movie. Through stories, real life heroes are born. Don’t miss this movie! Reel Girl rates “The Croods” ***HH***

Margot Magowan is a writer and commentator. Her articles on politics and culture have been in Salon, Glamour, the San Jose Mercury News, and numerous other newspapers and online sites. She lives with her husband and their three daughters in San Francisco.

A movie poster with a female protagonist is wonderful to see, but this shouldn’t be revolutionary. It should be common.

I’ve been avoiding writing this post.

I knew that female characters in children’s movies were not faring well in 2012. Not in number and not in stature. But I kept hoping. Hoping that somehow, before January, something would change, a slew of movies were going to appear from nowhere, stats would magically shift.

Yes, we got Brave this year.

Thank you director Brenda Chapman for making Pixar’s first movie ever with a female protagonist. I’m sorry that you, one of the only women to direct animated movies produced by a major studio, were fired half way through production and replaced with a male director.

But Brave is just one movie. The exception proves the rule. It’s December now, and sadly, it’s time for me to admit that once again, in the movies made for children in 2012, girls go missing.

In staggering proportions, males are consistently front and center; females are mostly sidelined or not there at all.

If you look at the gender placement in the images on the movie posters [here], the meaning of “marginalized” couldn’t be more clear. Remember, these are movie for kids. So when your children go to the movies, they are learning, time and time again, that boys are more important than girls.

For those of you who say there are alternative posters that I didn’t put in Reel Girl’s Gallery, you may find them on Google images, but these are the ones I saw all around San Francisco. Even if you find a poster on Google featuring, say, Tooth, the one female Guardian out of five (a typical gender ratio, by the way) that’s a pretty pathetic argument for her relevance.

For those of you who say the posters do not reflect the movie, that the movie has a strong female in it, maybe even two, maybe three, you are, most likely, referring to the Minority Feisty. No matter how many Minority Feisty there are in an animated film, they are represented as a minority.

The irony is, of course, that females are not a minority, not a special interest, not even a fringe group. Females are, in fact, half of the population. Girls are half of the kid population. Why aren’t they represented that way in movies made for children?

I call the Minority Feisty “Feisty” because that is, invariably, the adjective reviewers use to describe the “strong” female character in an animated film. “Feisty” is diminutive. It is what you call someone who plays at being powerful, not someone who is actually powerful. Would you ever call Superman “feisty?” How would he feel if you did?

One of the many male-centric movie posters featured in Reel Girl’s gallery.

The role of the Minority Feisty, like a cheerleader or First Lady, is to help the male star along on his important quest. Children need to see females front and center, as protagonists, as the heroes of their own stories.

Finally, even apart from the movie, these posters – and ads–  are their own media. Whether or not your kid goes to the movie, she sees these posters everywhere.

The movie poster is one of the reasons that I was so thrilled about Brave. Finally, San Francisco was papered with an image a daring girl, an image marketed to kids.

Obviously, the biggest impact of a narrative is made when kids get to know the character through the movie and then see that character on clothing, food packaging, and toys.

As you look at these posters, imagine the reverse, the gender ratio and the character placement, switched; the movie’s title reflecting the female star. Would you do a double take?

How many of us grown-ups don’t even notice the dominance of male characters anymore? How many of us experience the annihilation of females as totally normal, not to mention adorable and child-appropriate?

There is no good reason for the imaginary world to be sexist. Or is there?

Only 16% of protagonists in movies are female; only 16% of women make it into power positions in almost all professions across America.

Children’s movie posters, and of course the movies themselves, are an effective way that we acclimate a new generation to expect and accept a world where females go missing.

Out of the 16 posters for children’s movies in 2012 pictured, just 4 represent movies starring females: Mirror, Mirror, Brave, Secret World of Arietty, and Big Miracle. The Big Miracle poster diminishes Drew Barrymore pretty effectively. I loved Arrietty, as I love every Studio Ghibli film, but was surprised to see the boy so big on the poster.

I did not include YA movies, my three daughters are ages 3, 6, and 9. I’m not including Oogieloves because it’s an interactive song/ dance film, though it really annoys me that out of 7 Oogieloves, just 2 are female. I did not include Toys in the Attic, the dubbed Czeck stop-action film from 2009, because it is really creepy, disturbing, and not recommended for young kids.

Click here to see the full gallery.

Margot Magowan is a writer and commentator. Her articles on politics and culture have been in Salon, Glamour, the San Jose Mercury News, and numerous other newspapers and online sites.

The cast in fully dressed mode.

It turns out that “The Talk” is a daytime talk show on CBS, with a panel of hosts from sitcoms, reality TV, or comedy – like Sharon Osbourne, Aisha Tyler, Sara Gilbert, Sheryl Underwood, and Julie Chen. And apparently they recently had their fall season premiere, during which they took the boldest of bold steps in television – not wearing makeup.

I guess in terms of film and television, not wearing makeup IS big news. I’ve heard that cameras tend to amplify things like blemishes or under-eye circles, and that even a “natural” look requires a hefty makeup application. But then, of course, this means that we’ve absorbed and accepted the message that viewing anything less than a perfect face is a travesty, and that the sight of uneven skin tone is just an assault on the eyes that TV viewers can’t bear.

So, when I watched the video of Headline News that addressed this issue, I wasn’t all that shocked by the coverage. Take a look:

Wow. First of all, the story gives you one of two options in terms of how you see this – either the women are insane for going au naturel, or they’re bold and brave. These extremes just emphasize how central the idea of makeup supposedly is and should be for women and girls.

It’s not just normal to put your naked face out there, it’s either crazy courageous or it means you’re totally bonkers. (As a side note, I’m not entirely sure why, to The Talk, not wearing makeup also means wearing your bathrobe, as though being makeup-free indicates some kind of half-dressed state.)

One of the commentators in the news video said that while she thought this was “brilliant,” and that the message of being yourself is a strong one – “You don’t need bronzer, you don’t need blush, you don’t need lipstick – it’s a great message to love yourself just the way you are,” she also made sure to say that she thought it was a hot mess. So, which is it? Is it good to be your natural self, or are you just a hot mess for doing so?

The second commentator starts out a little better by saying she thought it was brilliant, but she immediately qualifies that by saying that it’s brilliant because it got people talking about the show – in other words, it was brilliant because it was a marketing ploy.

She then goes on to actually compare the women’s natural looks, by saying that “Sharon Osbourne looks amazing, but Julie Chen, that was a little shocking!” Seems like she missed the whole underlying message of going makeup-free – that it shouldn’t matter what you look like. Also importantly, and I think inherent in the makeup-free message, is that comparing the looks of women should be left out of the public discourse.

I’d give a thumbs-up for the women for going naked with their faces, and a major thumbs-down for the overwrought and dissecting coverage of what they did.

Larkin Callaghan is an epidemiology and health communication fellow at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, where she also received her doctorate in Health Behavior and Education. She blogs regularly at her own site, I’m Not Tired Yet, about women’s and adolescent health issues.

You can check out the trailer below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Relatively young women of a certain age will remember the supermodels of the mid-1990s, including Paulina. We thought their lives were so glamorous, didn’t we? Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Paulina Porizkova, walking around just looking goooorgeous, us wanting to be like them.

And I think what we can learn here, children, is that even the most successful models feel incredible insecurity, even while being a key cog in the gears that creates awful insecurity and self-hatred for most woman viewers. Another lesson we can learn:

If you want to love yourself, don’t go into modeling.

It turns out that when you’re a model, everyone around you picks on your appearance so much that you never really feel beautiful. Paulina says, “Working off of your looks pretty much makes you the opposite of self-confident.” (I almost cried when she said that.)

Paulina Porizkova gets back in front of the camera.

We hear this sadness throughout the film, even when the models are talking about their fun, exciting partying in the 1970s. Lisa Taylor speaks of her cocaine use and subsequent addiction: “I was so insecure that I needed to do it. It made me feel like I was worth being photographed.”

Our organization, About-Face, started in the mid-1990s, around the time one Vogue editor says “the look changed” due to all the drug use by models that made them incredibly thin. We used to call that look (perfected by Kate Moss) “heroin chic”, and it’s what spurred our founder, Kathy Bruin, to start what she then called the Stop Starvation Imagery Campaign.

In this film, aging is a topic thick with contradiction and its resulting layers. Interestingly, not all of these models are nipped and tucked to high heaven or shot through with silicone for 20 or 30 years, as you might expect: Some, like Isabella Rossellini and Paulina Porizkova, feel that it’s unnecessary, and that women should be allowed to age. Ms. Rosselini, dressed in a men’s suit, quips “Is this the new feet [sic] binding?” China Machado, who is 81-years-old, makes her statement:

It’s not that women want to stay young, it’s that the whole society makes us want to stay young… The most important thing you have, that will make you look different from someone else, is your expression. So you change that, your whole look goes. You could be more perfect… take out the lines… but then there will be nothing left of you.

… oh, and never mind the fact that it’s disgusting and insane to inject stuff into or cut open your face and put it back together for the sake of vanity. (Oh, did I say that out loud?)

Anyway, I love this woman, and want to be just like her when I’m 81.

And so much of that opinion seems to depend on the inner sense of self they had long before they were models. The existence of this inner core seems questionable depending on which (former) model is talking.

“Why do we keep talking about this?” asked TJ Walker in a video “review” (which was not really a review because he hadn’t seen the film). I mean, the guy has a point – why do we keep making “educational” films, writing books, “raising awareness” about beauty and its stranglehold on women? Let me venture an answer: Many women in the beauty, fashion, and film industries (or who were formerly in them) are looking down the barrel of misogyny’s gun and yelling into it “HELP!” We have a huge problem here, and it’s making us hate ourselves. I challenge you to name the problem in the comments below. Then, go out and do something about it.

Jennifer Berger is About-Face’s Executive Director.

To celebrate, we want to show you a woman who really loves her body, and showing you how she talks. (A word of caution: the video contains several F-bombs and some sexual descriptions.)

We now present “Fat-Bottomed Girls” by Kim Selling:

http://vimeo.com/21221916

Last year, we published Katie McCorkell’s poem “How to Help Someone With an Eating Disorder” on the About-Face blog.

For more information about NEDA, visit their web site or call the free, confidential Helpline, Monday-Friday, 8:30 am to 4:30 pm, Pacific Standard Time: 1-800-931-2237.

Kim Selling is an occasional writer, sometime poet, and unfailingly proud Californian. She graduated from the University of Washington last year, and is now floating around Seattle until she hits something solid.

Is this an appropriate activity for a 3-year-old?

Just when I thought parenting skills couldn’t become any more questionable, I come face-to-face with a new activity atrocity: pushing pole dancing for children, adolescents, and teens.

I almost choked on my morning cereal (Don’t worry, it wasn’t Cheerios – I still can’t get behind their marketing mishaps) when I read a June 2011 article from the British tabloid, The Daily Mirror, about a Northamptonshire dance studio offering a “kiddie pole dance” program, where 3-year-olds and up were schooled in the age-appropriate art of climbing and swirling on a stripper pole.

Dubbed “Little Spinners”, the class consisted of teaching girls how to lift and maneuver their bodies around the pole while “holding their legs in a V-shape.” Thankfully, a recent perusal of the studio’s web site shows that this class is no longer being offered.

While this is good news, the implications that there is a market for it are frightening. Comparable courses are being offered to an equally delicate age group: teens and preteens.

The Art of Dance, a Pole Dance and Burlesque School in Plymouth, Devon, England offers an “i-pole Pole Dancing Class” for 12- to 15-year-olds where this “exercise concept” is touted not only as a way to keep fit, but to socialize. While I was unable to find the course description on their actual web site, the school still offers the class, and a recent delve into their Facebook presence revealed a post from a women interested in having her 13-year-old niece attend an adult class with her.

Although the course offerings available for this age group require parental accompaniment for the initial visit and a signed and acknowledged consent and advice sheet, this posturing paperwork seems to only serve as liability padding.

The Internet is replete with indicators that this “activity” is readily available to youngsters. An entrepreneurial teen who taught herself pole dancing at the age of 16 with the assistance of web-purchased poles and DVDs, opened a controversial makeshift studio in her parents’ living room. Her business endeavor has since blossomed into two highly successful dance centers in England.

Many advocates believe this to be a physical regimen innocently on par with gymnastics. The UK has a lauded pole-dancing community complete with accreditation requirements for instructors and studios, as well as an explicit code of conduct. A British company is lobbying for pole dancing to become a test sport for the forthcoming Olympics, with dreams of it becoming an official part of the games by 2016.

The UK typically allows people ages 16 and older to participate in their classes (with parental consent), while the age cutoff in the U.S. is 18. But how young is too young to expose preteens and even teenagers to this “sport” almost inextricably linked to eroticism? Youth are being taught to contort their bodies into provocative poses: to not understand the sexually suggestive nature of these moves is dangerous.

What is showcased as innocent body bending in the comfort of a classroom sends alarming messages if performed in other environments. Many of the instructors and web sites boast such class offerings as ways to aid the development of self-esteem. This puts our youth at great risk and in some cases dangerously close to endorsing pedophilia. Many teens dealing with confusing feelings and the onset of puberty may see that such explicit dancing garners attention from their peers. It encourages the objectification of the body during a tender time of growth and transformation, when mentoring and a focus on overall healthy and body image are crucial.

The teacher is "helping to battle the stigma of pole dancing at an early age."

I’m a huge supporter of the expressive arts and firmly believe in teaching kids to connect with their bodies when they are young. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that this sort of activity aids in the fetishizing of youth and, in its extreme, could support the horrifying epidemic of child pornography.

To actively allow or encourage a child to be instructed on ways that sexually showcase her (or his) body borders on parental negligence. Undoubtedly, it puts a premium on certain body sizes and encourages conformity at a formative age when senses of self are blurry and bodies are burgeoning.

Plain and simple: Teens deserve the right to be raised in environments that support a healthy development of the self. As adults, our culture marginalizes and sexualizes women, which makes fostering and modeling positive body image for our youth all the more crucial.

Participation in such classes primes teens for the possibility of an antagonistic relationship with their bodies. Attempts to pass off pole dancing as physical fitness and “fun” further encourages the objectification of the body and can lead to lasting negative consequences. Does society have an obligation to limit the participation of teens in these adult-centric classes, or should this be a parent’s duty?

Heather is a blogger and yoga enthusiast who is passionate about body image, media literacy, and feminist activism. When not working at her corporate day job, her cultural commentary and other insights can be found at Ms. Mettle.

You know that saying “There’s truth in humor”? Well, it’s never been more accurate than in the hilarious send-up that positions Adobe Photoshop’s technology as a fancy, Euro (“by Adobé”) beauty product.

Fotoshop, by Adobé, isn't real, but then neither are society's standards of beauty.

What’s so great about the spoof (as further detailed in this post by About-Face’s own Jennifer Berger) is how it pokes fun at the conventions regularly found in real beauty ads to show just how absurd they are.

There’s the expensive, flawless (and no doubt Photoshopped) high-quality images that make the product look so perfect they ignite that feeling that you’ve simply got to have it sitting on your medicine cabinet shelf.

Then there’s the heavy use of legitimate- and important-sounding science-y words (“pro pixel intensifying fauxtanical hydro jargon microbead extract” as in the Fotoshop video) that play on our underlying desire to believe that somehow, somewhere a relatively inexpensive cure for aging that doesn’t involve needles and scalpels has been found. And finally, they trot out the ol’ promise of a miracle fix (“Finally, look the way you’ve always dreamed.”).

Ha ha. Whatever. Savvy 21^st century women don’t fall for crap like that anymore. Right?

Um, wrong, actually.

According to a British newspaper, the new Yves Saint Laurent Forever Young Liberator skincare line (which debuted in January 2012) had a waiting list in the UK of 5,000-plus women before its launch.

And how did YSL convince so many women to line—or rather queue—up?

Exhibit A – full of the important-sounding "Glycantif"

Well, let’s see. First they busted out some high-quality, perfected images of the shimmery, luxe-looking bottles that make the product look like something you just have to have.

Then they came up with some of those science-y words like “glycomics” and “glycobiology” and the brand’s new patented ingredient called “Glycantif.”

Now, I don’t know much about chemistry—but then again the average YSL consumer probably doesn’t either. So as real as “glycomics” might be, I think YSL’s tactical usage of these words is more about hoping to impress buyers than actually conveying information that they expect them to use.

And finally, to really get women opening their wallets, YSL claimed that its Forever Young Liberator is “one of the most amazing scientific breakthroughs we have discovered in relation to anti-aging.” In fact, they go so far as to call it the “Holy Grail” of skin care.

So as smug and sassy as the Photoshop send-up that we all love was, sadly, there’s another beauty product manufacturer that’s laughing all the way to the bank—at our expense.

Is Liz Lemon feminist enough?

If you identify yourself as a feminist, you probably already have an opinion on Tina Fey. Around the time 30 Rock debuted, everyone I knew was a huge Tina Fey fan. “She’s so gorgeous and smart and a feminist,” my friends would gush, holding their copies of the Tina Fey issue of Bust. (I am of course talking here about the maybe two other feminists I knew in high school.)

Then, as Tina got more and more exposure, something changed. Friends started making faces at the sound of her name, uncertain of how to feel. People started talking about the problems with 30 Rock’s female characters, especially Liz Lemon’s pretty, brainless assistant, Cerie. Complaints began to rise, particularly from the feminist segment of the population, who, in case you haven’t noticed, kind of expects a lot from its media.

Tina Fey portrays single women in an offensive way, the detractors said. Liz Lemon represents bad feminism. Liz Lemon’s feminism is crippling her career life, and therefore 30 Rock is saying that leftist politics are bad. Tina Fey’s SNL sketches enforce gender stereotypes. In fact, everything she writes is misogynist.

I myself briefly stopped watching 30 Rock in disgust after a particularly offensive rape joke. (Slate reporter Rebecca Traister collected many more such examples in her article “The Tina Fey Backlash”.) Suddenly, everyone was disappointed with Tina Fey. She wasn’t feminist enough. She wasn’t doing things right.

After enough of this talk, I grew to see Tina Fey as someone who never quite lived up to the potential that the feminist community had anticipated. “Oh, Tina Fey,” my friends would sigh (more of them now, because now I was in college and had met more people who were willing to talk to me about gendered slurs and Margaret Atwood). “She’s just really not that progressive.”

Bossypants… feminist salvation?

Imagine my surprise when I picked up Bossypants, Tina’s memoir — really more of a collection of thoughts and memories — and found it to be the most feminist popular book I’ve read in a long time. In it, Tina discusses institutionalized sexism at her job with the Second City improv troupe, and the secret feminist agenda of the infamous Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton sketch.

“You all watched a sketch about feminism,” she says, “and you didn’t even realize it because of all the jokes. It’s like when Jessica Seinfeld puts spinach in kids’ brownies. Suckers!” She continues by saying, “That night’s show was watched by ten million people, so I guess that director at The Second City who said the audience ‘didn’t want to see a sketch with two women’ can go [creatively vulgar phrase that I don’t think I’m allowed to write on this blog].”

Tina’s feminism in Bossypants is explicit and unapologetic. There’s no “I wouldn’t call myself a feminist, but…” hedging. There’s no compromising. In fact, Tina encourages the opposite of compromise, advising women, “Do your thing and don’t care if they like it.” She makes bold claims, not afraid to offend: “I have a suspicion that the definition of ‘crazy’ in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to [have sexual relations with] her anymore.”

Make no mistake—this is a radical book. (My personal favorite moment comes when Tina talks about the unsavory habits of some of her co-workers at SNL. She says, “Any time there’s a bad female stand-up somewhere, some [different creatively vulgar phrase] Interblogger will deduce that ‘women aren’t funny.’ Using that same math, I can state: Male comedy writers piss in cups.”)

And yet, I still see what was bothering all those people who were disappointed in Tina Fey and 30 Rock. Tina’s brand of feminism is not the attitude of someone who spent years in Women’s Studies classes. As far as I know, she does not have a background in feminist theory. She probably doesn’t read lots of cool feminist blogs. Her feminism is the attitude of someone who sees what’s happening in her world, and thinks it’s unfair to women. She’s not a gender studies scholar; she’s just pissed off.

The Tina Fey backlash seems to suggest a hostility towards this attitude among the feminist community. It’s understandable. Because so few celebrities are willing to identify as feminists, the ones who do are held up to represent the entire community. So when Tina Fey does or says something that not everyone in the feminist community agrees with, it’s a big deal.

However, Bossypants really made me re-evaluate my stance on this hyper-conscious policing. Do people have the right to criticize anyone, including Tina Fey, for not living up to feminist standards? Um, of course! That’s basically all I do with my life. But do we really want to say that women who don’t spend 100% of their time educating themselves on feminist theory aren’t allowed to be feminists? I don’t know about that.

For me, the most touching part of Bossypants is when Tina talks about her future. “Even if you would never sleep with or even flirt with anyone to get ahead,” she confides, “you are being sexually adjudicated by these LA creeps. … It seems to me that the fastest remedy for this ‘Women Are Crazy’ situation is for more women to become producers and hire diverse women of various ages. That is why I feel obligated to stay in the business and try hard to get to a place where I can create opportunities for others.”

Other people may be more careful about what they say, but Tina is doing real work to forward the cause and help other women. And anyone who’s willing to do that is certainly welcome in my feminist community, gendered jokes or no.

– Magdalena

Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids – a grotesque?

The film Bridesmaids has gotten a lot of attention this past year: a female-friendship focused film written by and starring women is pretty hard to come by. Notably present among the film’s recent Academy Award nominations was the Best Actress in a Supporting Role nod for Melissa McCarthy.

McCarthy is known not only for her role in Bridesmaids, but for her role in the TV series Mike and Molly and The Gilmore Girls (another rare show with a female cast, following a smart and savvy female protagonist, Rory). She’s also been the victim of some serious body-shaming in the media.

But the choice of McCarthy over other actresses seems to have grated the last nerve of Time magazine film critic Mary Pols, to such an extreme that she felt the need to write an entire column outlining the reasons that McCarthy was undeserving of the honor.

Winning an Oscar for a comedic role doesn’t happen too frequently. Pols makes sure to point this out, and also claims that her distaste for McCarthy’s nomination isn’t because her role is a comedic one – being good at comedy can be really hard, she admits, and McCarthy has great timing in that area:

http://youtu.be/aOjQ0qfGQvU

Pols admits that maybe she should just “be grateful” that a woman was recognized for comedic work. If I were McCarthy, my response would be “thanks, but no thanks, I don’t think I need your pitying resignation.”

Pols’ comment that “the Academy’s record on giving the incredible skill set it takes to pull off good comedy its due is sketchy at best” is hard to keep in mind when she claims that McCarthy’s character is “a grotesque,” that is, an over-the-top caricature with a “boxy wardrobe and newsboy cap” that reminded the critic of an old “ambiguously gendered character” named Pat that was popular on Saturday Night Live in the 1990s.

McCarthy’s character was different because she was a “cartoon of aggressive sexuality, wildly, crudely lusty” according to the critic – so the thing that made the difference between McCarthy’s character and the gender ambiguity of Pat was aggressive sexuality, something one generally attributes to men and is clearly a turn-off for Pols.

So, what is this caricature of overweight women that Pols claims McCarthy is playing into? I’m not really sure.

She compares this supposed “caricature” of an overweight woman to the racial caricature that Ken Jeong plays in The Hangover franchise – a character who plays so intently into Asian stereotypes and degrades multiple cultures that I cringed at the ads for the films – saying that McCarthy’s character had “equally offensive shenanigans” but instead of parodying an Asian culture, parodying “an over-the-top plus-sized lady.”

Why is aggressiveness or crudeness being attached to McCarthy being plus-sized, and how is even the parodying of crudeness related to her being plus-sized?

She claims that if you have any doubt about McCarthy using her weight to be the permanent punchline of her character, just check out the credits – you know, after the film, when the cast and crew names are scrolling down the screen – when McCarthy becomes “a joke about the outsized appetites of fat girls.” Because she is, you know, eating a jumbo sandwich.

This moment of the credits is what should look to as evidence of her using her weight as a punchline? I never got that impression, but I guess if you’re giving a plus-sized woman a sandwich, some people will think it automatically becomes a parody if she eats it in a funny way.

Pols claims that Kristen Wiig’s character had a more nuanced development, that we saw other characters grow, and that McCarthy played a stock character who didn’t change at all. But here’s the thing – Wiig was the main character in this film, not a supporting character – someone who was supposed to have a developing character arc. Her role also wasn’t as funny.

But also, McCarthy’s character did seem to evolve, and by the end of the film people actually connected to her. As her character advises Wiig’s character how to change her attitude, she revealed herself to be a woman who had pushed herself through social difficulties and someone who didn’t let anyone get in her way. She can be pushy; some people probably thought she was obnoxious. But a grotesque?

There are plenty of nominees that many people won’t agree with, for a variety of reasons. But it seems the critic was blinded by her apparent disgust at a woman who was acting too masculine – aggressive, “disgusting” and with swagger – for her own taste to see that McCarthy gave this character heart or that she was a character worth understanding.

– Larkin

The weight is over (dramatized)

Excess Baggage, the new Australian counterpart to weight-loss reality show The Biggest Loser, claims to take the higher road by not relying on humiliation and shaming of contestants.

It focuses on overall health vs. mere weight loss, utilizing a psychologist to address mental roadblocks which obstruct a healthy lifestyle, and rallying people off treadmills and into nature.

And for added motivation (read: viewer ratings), each contestant is surprised in the first episode by being paired with a celebrity (i.e.: Keven Federline, Britney Spears’ ex-husband, who subsequently was rushed to hospital during filming as a result of signs of cardiac arrest).

Touted as the “feel-good series of the year,” the creators emphasize health vs. weight loss and use the clever marketing tactic of viewers casting their votes on which contestant will become the “healthiest.”

So, semantically, geographically, and methodologically it’s slightly different than The Biggest Loser, but that’s where the differences end.

I’m certainly not going to argue that obesity isn’t a real health issue and doesn’t need to be addressed, but as soon as obesity is dramatized and sensationalized, we have problems.

I’m also not casting judgment on the contestants. They are courageous to leave the comfort of their daily lives and try to make changes to improve their overall health. It seems many of them have positive motivations to change, such as wanting to live longer so they can care for their children.

Unfortunately, media corporations are banking off real people’s suffering – turning personal lifestyle habits, emotional pain, shame and guilt, into a spectacle for entertainment:

http://youtu.be/a7Gbg0R_zzE

We certainly can’t take the creator’s quotes about “health promotion” at face value when large amounts of money are involved. Indeed, in a bit of a panic, newspaper The Australian has already reported that ratings dropped dramatically from 880,000 to 625,000 between the first and second episodes.

In the second episode, contestants were confronted with their stats (weight, waistline measurements, BMI) showing obvious signs of embarrassment (not unlike The Biggest Loser), which undoubtedly does nothing to increase self-esteem, and could potentially lead contestants and viewers to an increased obsession with obtaining “ideal” numbers. Health isn’t tied up in numbers.

So, thank you Excess Baggage, for your sincere efforts to one-up The Biggest Loser in the name of health, but I’m not buying it.

– Joy