“I grew up being constantly surrounded by women: my mother, my grandmother, my sister, my older cousins, my aunts, my godmother, my teachers, and many more whom I might not have noticed. I have always loved films, too. From a very young age, films were always so fascinating to me as I could learn a lot about myself from the characters’ virtual background and experience. But it quickly occurred to me that those women I could see all around me, at all times, were never represented, and pictured, in films, television series, cartoons, nor even in TV commercials. I cannot remember a single film in which a grandmother was raising eleven children by herself after moving to another country while her husband was working abroad. Instead, I saw many roles of fathers and husbands being praised for working hard while their on-screen wives and children were barely mentioned(a). Instead of seeing single mothers trying hard to make ends meet with two jobs and as many children, I saw single male barristers and doctors trying to raise their only child with unlimited financial resources and still finding it “too hard”(b). I have barely ever seen a film picturing sisters in their twenties getting through life together, sometimes on their own, struggling to be fully independent. But I remember seeing a few films in which brothers, or even just male friends, were enjoying their youth without much evidence of any sense of responsibility, or struggling(c). I never understood why the women we saw on screen often appeared to be holding the same roles, one after another…”
(b) Kramer vs Kramer, To Kill a Mockingbird, Liar Liar, Jingle All The Way
