Double Standards

Casting call: "1 actor preferably with experience working in films. 1 actress preferably curvaceous & attractive."

If an alien landed in my garden and asked what the world ofacting is like here on Earth, I’d show him that. And if he was unable to read English then I’d read it out to him. And if he didn’t understand English in any form then I’d show him a picture of Jonah Hill next to Megan Fox. Add to this the dent in the wall where I’m constantly banging my head against it in frustration and then he’d finally understand. He’d understand because the despair in my eyes and the whacking great bruise on my head would tell him what a sorry situation we’ve got ourselves in.

Now I know that guys get asked to be attractive in castings too. I know the industry also puts pressure on them to be fit and healthy and bloody gorgeous but I think even blokes who act would agree that the pressure on women is far worse. Take the above casting call as a soul-crushing example.A guy can get away with just having a bit of experience. That’s great. He’s worked hard and now his experience is being taken into account. Bloody marvellous. But our actress? No one gives a toss about how much work she has done or how much time she has spent developing her craft, as long as she’s gota good little figure and a pretty face, she’s got the job. It’s demeaning and upsetting and one of the key aspects that makes me hate my job.

I realise I’m not breaking any ground by saying that sex sells. Since the world of advertising realised that we like a girl with a cute face sells products more than a rat in a wig, being attractive has become more important than working out whether the chicken or the egg turned up to the party first. I realise it’s also not a new problem in the world of acting as our cinema screens have always been awash with beautiful leading men and ladies. But when you see a casting like the one above then you know that something has gone horribly wrong. 

If you don’t see castings regularly then you may or may not be amazed at just how many female roles ask for the actress to be ‘attractive’‘pretty’ or ‘slim.’ Even worse, the castings usually ask for all these things. Because so many writers think they can only write female parts who are prostitutes, strippers or femme fatales, we get sadly stuck with an endless stream of job srequiring us to be thin and beautiful. But it’s not just one sector that’s asking this of us. From unimaginative writers right at the bottom of the ladder to highflying execs who are casting for the next big feature film, they all ask for breathtakingly gorgeous ladies. It has given the industry a horrible aura of inevitability around it. You can guarantee that pretty much every job will contain more male roles than female and you can now usually bet a fair amountof money on the fact that the scant female parts that there are, most if notall, will involve the woman being good looking or naked. While the men get away with interesting characters and intriguing back stories, the women are just chucked in with a skimpy bra and a slick of red lipstick. 

I know I whinged on about this in a very similar fashion earlierin the week but I hope you’ll forgive me for repeating myself. And if you can’t forgive me, any chance you know the number of a good plastic surgeon?

Actor vs Actress

Hi-diddly-dee. An actor’s life for me. Or should that be actress? Ever since Whoopi Goldberg uttered the words…

“An actress can only play a woman. I’m an actor, I can play anything.”

…the debate has raged over what the correct term is. Some leapt on the bandwagon instantly and entered a full tirade against anyone who dared speak the name ‘actress.’ Feminism reigned supreme and regardless of what bits you entered the world with, the correct term was actor.

I completely understand the notion behind what Whoopi said but is it entirely necessary? Why should the term ‘actress’ be seen as derogatory? Personally I’m very proud to be an actress and everything that it stands for. Why should we be ashamed that our job title instantly means that people understand that we are a female performer? Does this mean that we’re now embarrassed to be called women? Will this topic force me to ask any more questions? Keep reading and find out… 

Now I should be proud when people ask me what I do for a living. I love my job and the ridiculous things that I get to do on a daily basis. Yes, I dread having to go through the ‘no I haven’t been in EastEnders’ speech and I hate explaining that I’m not working on anything yet and there’s no chance that they’ll have ever seen me in anything. But there’s something I hate most of all. It’s what I should damn well call myself. The term ‘actress’ has never bothered me but as I mention it, I feel the dark shadow of feminism looming over me. I get the same feeling I get when I let a man buy me a drink and the betrayal of the sisterhood takes over. The problem is though that, more often than not, you’re explaining your job to people who don’t act. Therefore, if you tell people that you’re an ‘ACTOR’ then they instantly think you’re an idiot. It will take all their willpower not to do the ‘ooooo, an actorrrrr’ (you know the one I mean) and even if they don’t do it in your face, you can see the struggle behind the eyes and you feel like a fool.

A sad thing happens when you type in the word ‘actress’ into Google. Go on, do it now. Yep. The first bloody thing it brings up is ‘actor.’ Even the world’s biggest search engine instantly corrects you and makes you feel like you share the same sexist views as your great Uncle George. Instead of just humouring you and brining up an informative Wikipedia page that would include a handy amount of facts so that you could easily write a blog about the history of the actress, it leads you, like the frightened little politically correct beast it is, to the page that it thinks it should do. 

I realise that the term actor was originally set up to just mean a performer and there was no gender bias to the word. It just happened to mean a male performer because us ladyfolk weren’t allowed to do silly voices for a living so as soon as someone said the dreaded word, everyone knew they were talking about a bloke who gets his kicks running around on stage. It’s only when the world realised that a female role is the part that women were born to play that they came up with a new word to describe these new and interesting beings. 

But most importantly, what’s wrong with a bit of differentiation between men and women anyway? Weren’t we all happy that the term ‘actor’ meant a male performer and ‘actress’ meant a female performer? Does this mean that we all need to campaign to be called men regardless of our gender? And what about male performers? If men want to jump on this trundling bandwagon going nowhere, will we find Dominic West suddenly declaring…

“An actor can only play a man. I’m an actress, I can play anything.”

No. Of course not.  And if he does, I bet we’ll all be clamouring to be called an actress again…