Our latest guest blog is from Ann Kristin Glenster an award-winning screenwriter, voting member of BAFTA, on the Board of Directors of Women in Film and Television, and a Fellow at the RSA.
Women’s objectification and absence from the public eye is not just confined to politics, but another manifestation of the presentation of women in the media across the board.
I admit it. I’ve been as sidetracked as everyone else in this debate about the portrayal of women in the media. Following the current stir of alleged sexist and ageist institutional practices at the BBC, launched by former Countryfile presenter Miriam O’Reilly and now Selina Scott, I have happily added my views on women’s artificially enlarged breasts, frozen foreheads and hair extensions as they appear in the public eye. I have even been to the EU Parliament in Brussels and called for broader representation of women on screen. And yet, I’m starting to think I may have missed a major point.
Truth be told, I don’t care that much about what women look like. I rather care about what they have to say. And so I have joined in the calls for broader pictorial representation thinking that if we have a greater variety of women on the screens we would somehow get a more interesting reflection of society. But now I think that by going along with a debate stuck on the physical image of women, I’ve missed the point. It is not really interesting what women look like, but what they feel, say and do.
Granted, physical stereotypes are a real barrier. But when a senior manager at the BBC recently told me that he did not hire women presenters because he couldn’t find many enough with talent, it makes me ask if it isn’t the time we move the debate on from appearances to brains? I want to watch Selina Scott, Miriam O’Reilly and Moira Stuart, all who have fallen victim to alleged sexism and ageism at the BBC, not because they look “more representative” of the general population, but because they have interesting things to say.
It is when women are given the chance to be more than” just seen” that we will have an exciting, vibrant culture and equal society. In short, it’s the day Jordan (aka Katie Price) tells me something I don’t know about politics, neuroscience, law or gardening that we’ll see some real progress. For me the point is not to get Jordan off the screen, but to give her some content, and opening the media to women who not only look like the rest of us, but just as importantly, to their point of view.
Ann Kristin Glenster is a former managing director of a film fund, and has more than ten years experience from the film and television industry. She trained in dramaturgy and law and has degrees from several universities including Columbia University in New York. She currently runs the film business consultancy Boiler Station from Norway and London.