Hollywood Respects Women? JANE Twitter Feed Tells a Different Story
It’s hard to be a woman in Hollywood. We all technically know this, from the pay gap to the lack of directing opportunities to the general sexism that is too often the norm in the entertainment industry.
But apparently, as a new Twitter feed both hilariously and painfully illustrates, it’s even more demeaning to be a female in film than you dared imagine.
As Gizmodo noticed, a producer named Ross Putman has started to tweet the introductory descriptions of female protagonists from various scripts he’s been reading, using the Twitter handle @femscriptintros. He replaces the names of the characters with JANE, but keeps the rest of the prose unchanged. The results show that when you’re a woman in Hollywood, too often the only thing that matters is that you are smokin’ hot and, preferably, under the age of 30.
Some examples:
A gorgeous woman, JANE, 23, is a little tipsy, dancing naked on her big bed, as adorable as she is sexy. *BONUS PTS FOR BEING THE 1ST LINE
— Ross Putman (@femscriptintros) February 10, 2016
JANE (late 20s) sits hunched over a microscope. She’s attractive, but too much of a professional to care about her appearance.
— Ross Putman (@femscriptintros) February 10, 2016
JANE, 28, athletic but sexy. A natural beauty. Most days she wears jeans, and she makes them look good.
— Ross Putman (@femscriptintros) February 10, 2016
JANE, a 19 year old Bunny girl - honey-blonde farmland beauty queen.
— Ross Putman (@femscriptintros) February 10, 2016
JANE stands next to it (30’s) dressed in a paramedic’s uniform - blonde, fit, smokin’ hot.
— Ross Putman (@femscriptintros) February 10, 2016
You get the idea. It’s unclear where these scripts are coming from; given that he’s only got four producing credits to his name on IMDb, Putnam may not be getting the cream of Hollywood’s crop. (He also may be trying to make a name for himself by starting this Twitter feed.)
Even so, this exercise is still entertaining and extremely sobering in the opinion of this JANE, a woman typing on a laptop in that simultaneously adorable and sexy way that women only do in male-gaze Hollywood fantasies.
UPDATE: Kara Brown at Jezebel did an email interview with Putman and got a bit more information about how this Twitter project came about. Apparently it all started with Putman venting his frustrations about all the awful female character descriptions on his Facebook page.
“I found myself posting to Facebook far too often ‘here comes another script with our 45 year-old male lead dating a 25 year-old woman,’ and decided I was going to keep track of the female character introductions in scripts I read for a few weeks,” Putman tells Brown. “I went back and combed through past scripts too, and the patterns were pretty disconcerting. I plan on posting every one that I read, and there are plenty that aren’t offensive, but honestly, most of them have some element—subtle or overt—that plays into latent objectification.”
Putman also said that as a producer and script reader, he estimated that he has read more than 4,000 scripts in the last eight years. Which suggests that if he posts every JANE-worthy description he’s ready, he’ll be busy with his Twitter feed for quite some time.
Read the full interview with Putman at Jezebel.
Image credit: ThinkStock
