The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.

Wednesday, Lisa Rosen of the LA Times penned an article entitled “Don’t Cross Them,” discussing the women cast in the very successful FX cable drama “Justified.”  The show features no less than six females, who, whether good, evil or in-between, are three-dimensional, capable and kick-ass in their own way.  It is refreshing that we are not seeing only the typical cookie cutter, twenty something pretty people. 

While the hero Raylan Givens’ ex-wife (Natalie Zea) is sometimes in need of her man to bail her out of difficult situations, his ex-girlfriend (Joelly Carter) has her own self contained story lines and solves her own problems. As Rosen points out, both characters are fully realized in terms of their emotional life. Linda Gehringer, portraying Givens’ stepmother, offered “we don’t have little simpy girls on this show.” “Justified” prominently features an African American marshal, Rachel (played by Erica Tazel), who despite her diminutive size, more than holds her own strategically and physically. Character actress Margo Martindale’s [PHOTO below] portrays evil matriarch Mags Bennett – a role originally conceived for a man – and does a phenomenal job with this nuanced, foreboding character.

The producers of “Justified” opting to offer the role of this year’s chief villain to a woman also bring to mind one of the most successful sci-fi film franchises of all time:  Alien.  There too, the lead role of Ripley was originally written for a man.

One would be hard pressed to think of anyone other than Sigourney Weaver carrying these four films on her back.  A reluctant space traveler fulfilling the roles of both action hero and archetypal mother, Weaver brings gravitas, believability and dignity to the terrifying proceedings.  The opportunity to play such a character was not only a rarity in 1979 when the film series began, it remains so today.

The “Alien” franchise notwithstanding, television has always offered more opportunity for women than feature film, but even within that, series regular roles are often skewed towards greater numbers of male characters and the women of the show seem to have less longevity and creative weight. Take the twenty-year run of the original Law and Order – Sam Waterston was the riding DA on the show for 17 years.  Yet his second chair – always a woman – had been replaced numerous times.  Three different female leads on “Criminal Minds” were rather abruptly dropped over the last few years.  Did they all want to leave the show? 

Likewise another concentration of many TV programs is to have the lead characters, often work colleagues, regularly hopping into bed with one another.  How does this teach us to view men and women in the workplace?  Is it also likely that women are the ones who end up being less respected and blamed for the liaison?  With rare exception, these affairs feel contrived to boost TV ratings but usually just get in the way of the number one reason someone is watching a procedural in the first place – to see the case solved by the end of the hour.

And if all the doctors on shows like  ”Grey’s Anatomy” and “Private Practice” really spent that much time screwing each other, I doubt they’d have any time for their patients.

In CBS’ “CSI Miami,” women are made to look as much like eye candy as possible, shoveled into snug pants, wearing four inch heels and push up bras with low cut tops.  Who in their right mind would walk into work dressed that way and expect to be treated as a serious professional?  While the show itself may be cartoon entertainment, none of the men are portrayed, or dressed, in a frivolous manner and it encourages us to see women in a limiting way.

Some shows do attempt to fight the mold. The successful CBS series “Cold Case” had as its principle character a beautiful detective, who thankfully dressed in comfortable shoes, her hair carelessly pull back off her face, playing against the typical eye candy scenario.  Yet she was depicted as a loner with severe intimacy issues, almost incapable of handling a relationship at home.  So is she only allowed to wear comfortable shoes because she is inept at romance?  Hmmm.

Academy award winning actress Geena Davis recently founded her Institute on Gender in Media.  She said she was moved to do so as a result of watching TV with her kids and being “floored” to find “the same kind of gender bias and gender gap in what we’re showing little kids” as she had observed via women being portrayed in adult programming.  In a recent conversation with Wall St. Journal’s Rebecca Blumenstein, Davis reported that in G-rated movies, the ratio of males to females ranged between 3 to 5 males for every one female. Since women comprise 52% of the population, that is an odd ratio. 

She further stated that “of the female characters that existed, the majority are highly stereotyped and/or hyper-sexualized.”  Most shocking, “the female characters in G-rated movies wear the same amount of sexually revealing clothing as the female characters in R-rated movies.”

Ms. Davis discussed the portrayals of girls’ aspirations in these films – the number one aspiration was “finding romance” and the number one occupation was “royalty.”  Not surprisingly, Davis notes, “the majority of female characters in animated movies have a body type that can’t exist in real life. So, the question you can think of from all this is: What message are we sending to kids?” 

Yet this is no different than many of the cartoon images we are still sending to adults…

There is also a fine line portraying violence toward women on television and in film.  While it is critical to offer story lines that draw attention to the number of women who are victims of violent crime, often violence against women feels sensationalized and, horribly, even intended to titillate.  Where is the line? 

And while progress has been made in terms of offering up heroines who hold their own, women characters on TV are still outnumbered by men in terms of cast ratio, and outgunned in terms of being as capable and independent as their male counterparts – regardless of whether they are in a relationship or not.  These portrayals have a deep and lasting effect on children and adults, although some may not admit to those effects consciously.

Finally, Ms. Blumenstein asked Ms. Davis the impact of her findings.  Ms. Davis answered,

“They found that the more hours of television a girl watches, the fewer options she believes she has in life. And the more hours a boy watches, the more sexist his views become.”

[My kids] are only allowed to watch TV if I’m there. And I make a running commentary the whole time to take away the negative impact, asking things such as: “Couldn’t a girl have played that part?” And there’s reason to believe that this is actually very effective.”

FX’s “Justified” is still more the exception than the norm.  I tip my hat to producers who take a chance on investing in women different qualities and abilities than those of the less defined window dressing or diminishing type roles often relegated to them.