This shouldn’t be surprising to anybody, but it’s probably good to be reminded. A study by USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism that surveyed the top 100-grossing movies of 2009, and found that only 32,8% of the 4 342 speaking characters were female. Let us remember that 2009 was the year that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen came out.

This was also the year that the ostensibly lady-friendly The Twilight Saga: New Moon came out.

So I mean this would suggest that at present ladies are mostly in films to stand around and look pretty without saying words, which isn’t great. Probably a little more damning is the fact that the percentage is unchanged since 2008. Not that 2008 was a particularly bad year for female representation on film, but it would’ve been nice to at least see some progress towards equal stats.

The study goes on to dissect the way men and women were depicted physically on screen, observing the women were far more likely to be seen wearing “sexy clothing… such as swimwear or unbuttoned shirts” (by a ratio of 25,8% to 4,7%), to “expose skin” (23% versus 7,4 % ), and “to be described by another character as attractive” (10,9 percent versus 2,5 percent).

The study does, however, find that women overtook men in one capacity: ticket sales. More than 50% of the movie tickets sold in 2009 were sold to women, which is maybe a little worrying in so far as it suggests that female moviegoers are complicit in reinforcing a pretty sexist depiction of ladies by a pretty sexist industry (behind the camera, only 3,6% of the directors and 13,5% of the writers were female).

But no, I’m sure The Expendables 2 is going to be great.

[Source: LAT]