Pixar’s Female Problem: Please Stop Asking Me, “What About Jessie?”

[Neoma]

Let me begin with this: if a studio as innovative as Pixar made 12–that’s TWELVE– films with female protagonists and a few had perhaps 1 or 2 strong tertiary characters were who were male and maybe 1 in 10 male characters with ANY speaking parts at ALL wouldn’t you think that was a teensy-weensy bit disproportionate, minimally a failure of imagination and maximally openly hostile in its dismissal of boys and men?

Would it feel an adequate comeback if I shrugged and said, well, there were kick-ass guy side characters who was love interests in one or two films. Jessie is great, yes she is. But guess what: THE FILM IS NOT ABOUT JESSIE. It’s about Woody. And Cars is not about what the comment referred to as the “Spunky Attorney Car” (Jeez, does she even have a name)? It’s about Lightening McQueen. It is NOT the same thing, and to even intimate that it is shows how inured you have become to the fact that female characters so rarely play the central role. We are happy with the crumbs of being “strong” but completely unnecessary (really) side characters.

Link

I recommend reading the entire blog post. I really love Pixar, mainly because I wanted to be an animator until I realized how expensive paper is. But wow... Good points all around.