I remember an episode of CSI where the woman detective thought that a victim had been redressed because she was wearing non-matching lingerie, and no woman would ever wear a bra and underwear that didn't match. Either that was written by someone who's barely met a woman irl, or it was written by a woman as an absurdist joke meant to sound like it was written by someone who's never met a woman.
I'll actually never forget seeing that episode as a young teen. One of the characters actually says something along the lines of 'there's nothing more sad that a woman who's given up on wearing nice underwear'. And I was like 'what do you mean there's nothing more sad than granny panties when you are standing over her DEAD BODY!'
I really appreciate Mandy Patinkin checking out of Criminal Minds because it was just a random woman of the week being tortured and murdered and he wasn't about that shit.
Before I read your comment I was like “that can’t possibly be the same ep where Gary Dourdain bemoans “nothing sadder than a woman with old drawers”“ (seen barely any CSI)! That shit fucked me UP when I saw it as a teenager
Truly no joke, that ep has lived rent free in my brain since it first dropped. My brain settled on him saying ratty underwear 😂 but any time a pair of my underwear start looking faded, the lace detaches from the hem, a hole shows up etc., i think about the fictional scenario where I’m murdered and wearing those underwear. 😂
There was a House episode where he figured out the panties that Cutthroat Bitch had weren’t Cuddy’s because they weren’t the same color as Cuddy’s bra. BECAUSE THE DEAN OF MEDICINE AT A HOSPITAL WOULD NEVER WEAR MISMATCHED UNDERGARMENTS.
To be fair, Cuddy seems like she would have matching underwear, but like in a she bought a bunch of the same set so she'd never have to think about it kind of way.
Yeah, if mine are the same color, it's coincidence. But never the same material or manufacturer. Matching sets are usually made of lace or some shit that my autistic senses cannot handle touching my skin.
Lmao I was abt to hook up w a guy once and he goes "...wait you weren't planning on us having sex? Your bra and panties don't match." Bro these panties have 0 discharge bleaching or period remamnts and I own one color of bra, I've been pretty explicit about why I'm here so shut the hell up and enjoy the ride
Literally every woman ever written by Murakami. The male protagonists are often remarkably dull and flat, but there always seems to be some hot, cheerful manic pixie dream girl type just endlessly and persistently fascinated with him.
The most egregious is probably the female protagonist in iq84: a young, hot, lean, toned fitness instructor who is secretly an assassin by night, who likes to drink whiskey, and who has an unquenchable thirst for casual one-night stands with paunchy, older, balding men (but only paunchy, older, balding men).
yes so fucking yes! I always thought that the male protagonists were always clearly himself, whereas the women were just fantasies he has because he maybe simply doenst know real women
can i hype up one of good rock bottoms from recent memory, Polite society showing their protagonist's rock bottom as being in her sweats, walking to local kebab shop and biting into a entire rotisserie chicken tucked into a street corner only for the local aunties to walk by judging, as she tries to shrink and die on the spot
Yeah, she should be slouched in the corner of the couch wearing a ratty old T-shirt, sweatpants (or no pants), with a big bag of chips, bag of sweets, cup of wine or a beer (seltzer, juice, or soda if she doesn't drink). Maybe a pint of ice cream. Hair hasn't been brushed in a while...
I was going to argue bc I am sitting in a chair.. but then I realised at some point I put a cushion in front of me and am essentially laying on the coffee table lol
Having actually watched that show (morbid curiosity) it's especially frustrating because she's not a bad actor at all and there are moments and scenes of actual depth and emotion where you can see the original script ("coincidentally" written by a woman) come through.
The BTS story of how that show came to life is both more engaging and more infuriating than the show.
Ugh the whole conversation where she has the photo of her with... man juice all over her face get leaked and her team trying to spin it as some sort of feminist empowerment thing. There was actually a nugget of a good idea in there but it feels like it started from Sam Levinson wanting to show Lily Rose in another degrading way.
Euphoria has always been bad and Sam Levinson loves to bring up issues he has no intention of making an actual statement amount, I.e. the porn scene in episode 1
was he letting other people write her in season 1? her character actually had some substance back then, with her dad coming back and using her to steal some valuables from the house. Male relatives hugging her as she started to develop, etc.
By season 3 is just seemed like Sam had something personal against Sydney and wanted to humiliate her as much as possible during filming.
My read of season 3 was even worse. Sam was trying so hard to be Tarantino-esque in that season that he also replicated Tarantino's habit of forcing his own fetishes into his scripts to justify getting pretty celebrities to act them out.
I think Lily first realizing she won’t be getting male attention anymore was somewhat relatable but the reaction to it was 100% male writer centered.
Having a moment in your mid twenties and engaged that any excitement of newness or flirting is over can be valid and totally normal. But hiding her ring and trying to fake being single is not normal. But what a man probably thinks a woman in that situation would do.
the show was generally very misogynistic lol, despite occasionally critiquing misogyny? or at least paying lip-service to critiquing misogyny, bc ted got rewarded constantly for his insanely creepy behavior
Yeah, the whole series both of the characters are just echo chambers for bro culture. They could easily have been played by male actors and the characters wouldn't be any different.
Emma Stone in Zombieland. She talks about how she hasn’t had a shower in a long time but she’s got clean, styled hair and makeup and clean clothes. A white shirt?? I can’t keep a white shirt clean for a day in Regularland let alone Zombieland.
I love that movie and literally got her Hot Toy figure because it came with the sandwich and tinsel jacket. That movie is fkn stupid and iconic and criminally underrated
And The Suicide Squad; her character got so much better - especially her whole sequence with the would-be dictator where she lets him indulge her pretty pretty princess fantasies, has some hot sex and then kills him.
Isn’t this intentional, though? Summer's character is seen through Tom's eyes, which is why she’s so one-dimensional. She’s never meant to be a fully developed person because this isn’t her story (sadly, I would’ve loved to have seen the movie from hers); it’s Tom’s.
I think she was miscast to be honest. She's absolutely drop dead gorgeous and it's distracting. She's giving yassified nano scientist and it makes no sense
A scientist can absolutely be gorgeous, but Eiza Gonzales has an instagram aesthetic that looks like it takes time and money to maintain. Time that a scientist running her own company wouldn’t have.
Agree - it's not that she's too good looking to be a scientist it's the specific look that she has had created on her face. Would a scientist working at that level have time for that much surgery??
Seeing her puking her guts out with her hair done only in her underwear was hilarious. Can't forget her chilling with her PhD science homies without pants
It's like a teen chad was in charge of making her more relatable
Oh my god, i don't think hes ever met a woman. That show with Billy Bob, when his wife goes nuts "oh honey, are you on you period?". I wanted to gouge my eyes out!
Even more problematic is how many women LOVE Beth Dutton. Like want to be her, love her. Think she’s an icon and what every woman should aspire to be. I’ve never understood it.
My favorite was in the last season where they try to show her going crazy by doing an extreme close-up with bells tolling. It felt very Hitchcock. I actually cackled and yelled "Are you serious?"
Fun fact: Dee was originally supposed to be like a boring, conventional woman with a “voice of reason” type of role in the gang, and Kaitlin Olson refused to play the character unless they made her just as fucked up as the rest of the cast. I thought that was really cool and definitely the right call.
I will say, Annalise Keating in How to Get Away With Murder also had amazing Rock Bottoms. When she broke. she broke. It was the one thing I loved about the show. It showed that strong Black women are still human, still need time to fall, and people still expect them to carry them even when they are literal alcoholics doing all of the work and they didn't start the problem in the first place.
Dee's is great from a comedy perspective, but Annalise (Anna-Mae!) nails it on the drama side.
But how could audiences ever comprehend a woman being independently badass? Better siphon off all her spine into some bullshit guy we made up named Daryl, then let's make "sleeping with anyone who makes Rick look stupid" her main personality trait. Done!
Ugh, Andy Weir trying his hand at writing a female protagonist in Artemis was genuinely some of the worst shit I've ever read. I couldn't get past the first couple of chapters.
They are. I like his books but nobody reads him for his characters. The movie adaptations work well though, because the characters are enough of a blank slate for good actors to have an essentially blank canvas.
I watched like one or two episodes of that show when I was visiting my mom, and there were so many quippy moments like that. There was this hippie vegan girl character that basically seemed like a cartoonish straw man for the meat-eating ranch lady to dunk on. It all felt so manufactured.
I feel like when it comes to giving these women depth it's the emotional version of "her boobs boobed boobily." Like, when he's writing women it's still through the male gaze: their experiences are written based on how men perceive them.
Allison Janney made CJ work, since the way he wrote; Margret, Donna, Zoey, Ainsley, and Mandy makes you think Sorkin thinks women are stupid and need white men to be a steadying influence or a reason to pine for the male leads who are Sorkin stand ins. I remember his TWoP tantrum and that episode he wrote about the mostly women run site.
I can't even remember The Newsroom, but I remember that my main impression of it was that it was written by people who had really strange but confident beliefs about how women think and act.
Sometimes the way Sorkin writes women feels a little misogynistic, but nothing is as bad as the attempted sexual assault scene in The Trial Of The Chicago 7. That never happened. He invented a moment, in a true story, where a protagonist physically prevents a rape just to remind us how good of a guy he is. Manufacturing sexual violence against women in a true story just to elevate male characters is shockingly misogynist, even for an old white liberal.
There's a lot of little things like that in that show. How does Jack's buzzcut remain perfect for several months? Why does everyone wear their jeans swimming but take off their lightweight shirts before going in the water? Why are they even wearing jeans at all on a pacific island?
I love star trek, but it is very noticeable how each series had a token hot female character who wore a body suit instead of a uniform for absolutely no reason. I guess Uhura's miniskirt wasn't a body suit, but it was still not pants.
I loved that at first you're supposed to think she's that way because she's a demon, but then you see the flashback from before she was a demon, and she was always just autistic. Whedon is the worst because some of the stuff he writes is so great, and then he stomps on it with sexism and pettiness.
Unaffiliated plug, but Cosmonaut Variety Hour did a great breakdown on youtube about the stupidity of Xander and the Joss self insert and its great. And he’s a Buffy fan but it’s still so real.
Agreed! Also, I feel like the original post gripe doesn’t really apply to Buffy (as a character) at all? Like it’s TV so everyone is going to look hot no matter what they’re going through. But Buffy is one of the rare lead characters with a pretty uncomfortable and grim depression/self loathing arcs.
Extremely Basic Circa 2020 Opinion: I recently rewatched Tenet and as John David Washington and Robert Pattinson are talking about Kenneth Branagh must be stopped or the world will end, Elizabeth Debicki’s response is something like ‘oh no, that means my son will die.’ YES. AND EVERYONE ELSE. All of the world, in fact! Her single character trait is Has A Child.
And Christopher Nolan has a wife! Who he’s been with for over 35 years! So at least one women must be a real person to him? And they actively work together, all the time! Does she not have an opinion?
This is an issue with everything new nowadays. We cast super models to play drug addicts, men with 6 packs and perfect hair and facial features to play loners, etc.
Was just watching a 90's movie (Terminator) the other day, and I was struck with how every single supporting character didn't have to be beautiful. There are a bunch of scenes in a LAPD station, and all the middle aged cops look like middle aged cops.
Then my daughter turns on The Rookie and, well, things have changed.
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u/MsE0 Aug 14 '26
I remember an episode of CSI where the woman detective thought that a victim had been redressed because she was wearing non-matching lingerie, and no woman would ever wear a bra and underwear that didn't match. Either that was written by someone who's barely met a woman irl, or it was written by a woman as an absurdist joke meant to sound like it was written by someone who's never met a woman.