Don’t you have any where you look like a girl?
I want to draw attention to something Pieter B said in a comment, because the situation he describes is so…frustrating, pervasive, infuriating…
I used to have a photo studio, and since I’m in Los Angeles I did a lot of shoots with actors and models. One day a stuntwoman who was trying to move into acting came to me with her portfolio, and said an agent who’d been interested in representing her had looked at her photos and asked “Don’t you have any where you look like a girl?”
She was a trained athlete, and in all her photos she was tall and proud and looked physically capable. Personally, I find that quite attractive, but then I’m not a typical guy. So we did a lot of shots and I had to keep reminding her to “relax the shoulders, relax the shoulders.” I made her “look like a girl,” but I’d much rather have celebrated the fact that she was a woman who could kick ass and take names.
I suppose we can take an optimistic view and say that she was broadening her potential range, as opposed to narrowing it. Maybe the agent wanted girly photos in addition to athlete ones rather than instead of. Maybe. But I doubt that men get told to include photos of themselves looking smaller and weaker. It would be nice if “like a girl” were not equated with “less athletic and powerful.”
Looking like a girl is not just about looking less athletic and powerful, but in general, less capable and less intelligent. That’s a pervasive bad in our society.
Ah, it’s the implication of ‘weakness’ that concerns you. I’m sometimes quite oblivious to the obvious and the title of the earlier post didn’t connect for me. Sorry about that.
I don’t see the portrayal of physical differences as an issue because it is the biological reality that men, on average, are bigger and stronger than women, on average. Why the despair about that reality being reflected in icons designed to let people easily visually discriminate which is which?
The pictures of the actress/model/stuntwoman is a bit of a different situation. Your optimistic approach seems appropriate to me. I suspect that men might get told to have either more athletic pictures or more sensitive pictures depending on what was missing. Do you suppose that a woman with only ‘girly’ pictures might be advised to get some showing her being strong and athletic?
Ah, this reminds me of an episode from a year or two ago. There was some kind of party with various famous people present, one of whom being Marit Bjørgen. She was wearing a sleeveless dress, thus showing off her biceps. And what biceps they were! You don’t get to win Olympic gold medals in cross country skiing with delicate “ladylike” arms. And yet, some people were complaining that this made her look bad, she should have dressed differently to hide her muscular arms, and so on. The fact that this even became a topic of debate on national news media – in a country were champion cross country skiers are celebrated as national treasures – still astounds me.
Here in Toronto, for the last twenty years, Ross Petty has been doing Christmas ‘pantomime’ shows, fractured fairy tale shows for children with puppets and the like during scene changes. On several of these, his wife Karen Kain has had a performing role as well; one year when they did Aladdin, Karen was a music box dancer in an interlude. (A comedic interlude which involved someone trying to lean in and watch who kept getting bumped and knocked aside as the music box dancer turned, completely oblivious to his presence.)
Karen Kain used to be the prima ballerina for the Canadian Ballet Company, and since retiring has been their artistic director. But, well, she’s still built like a ballerina. Which means she has really serious leg muscles. Watching her dance as the ‘music box dancer’ with the camera close up was… impressive.
Jenora, most people do not realize that professional dancers are first and foremost superbly conditioned athletes; once that’s done, they must be artists as well, and their medium is their own body. I stand in awe of them, one and all.
re: photos for woman actors, one client summed up what the agents want in a head shot as “young, perky and sexually available.”
::facepalm:: STUNT person! She’s NOT going to be the one filmed in close up doing the swoony bits. She’s going to be the one jumping off the building in a harness and flipping while she does it. She HAS to be strong. It doesn’t MATTER what the average woman is like. She is being hired for her ability to do things like ride motorcycles, jump spectacularly, take falls, and do gymnastics.
The agent is effectively telling her that he thinks that the people casting are so biased they prefer she seem ‘sexy’ to them over seeming capable to do her job.
It *is* something to get upset over.
Oh, now I see, trying to move into acting. But maybe a portfolio showing her strength is still a good idea, because if she could barely manage to fake being weak and dainty for a photo, how is she going to carry it off for a film? It’s like, I left acting because I got sick of being told I think too much. Sorry, playing Dumb Bunny is too much of a stretch. Alan Rickman is allowed to be a thinker *and* an actor.
Returning to the scene of the crime…
@Beth Clarkson
Not a chance. Even if a woman wanted photos using exercise equipment, the agents—and presumably the casting directors—wanted to see photos that make it look like she’s having fun, not actually working out.