Women on television

I consider myself a feminist. I am not going to go into a lengthy explanation of why, I just do. However, it seems as though I generally hate women on television. Not all of them, of course, but usually the ones who are the leads on a TV show. SVU, LOST, CSI, I could name a lot. I personally think it's because most of the women on TV are on shows like SVU or something where they play detectives or police or FBI or whatever. And it's always a really attractive and skinny girl who is this huge badass on the force. I find it difficult to believe. There was this show on a few seasons ago that I'm sure got canceled called Alcatraz that I watched because Jorge Garcia was on it and he is great, but the other lead on the show was a female FBI agent. She was fine, I guess, but I didn't buy it. She was really skinny and I couldn't picture her ever taking down a suspect, so how did she get so far in her career? I bought Ana Lucia as a cop on LOST, but she was awful. She was believable as a beat cop, but not as an actual character on the show. Plus, she sucks at acting. Sorry, but she does. Sometimes I'll be in the movie theatre and I'll see a preview for a new movie that looks awesome, but then Michelle Rodriguez pops up and I groan. Like, out loud. A real groan.

Now that I think about it, I didn't really like any of the female characters on LOST. Kate, Sun, Claire, Juliet, Ana Lucia, Libby, Penny, Charlotte, even that old lady who helped them get back to the island. Sun wasn't too bad, but I hated the rest of them. The only one I actually liked was Shannon, and everyone hated her - America hated her so much the producers killed her character. I thought she was the only female character (besides maybe Sun) that was at all believable. She was selfish and awful, but that's what people are like. To be fair, some of the male characters were less than believable, but I didn't have as much of a problem with it. I hated Jack, but without him there wouldn't have been much of a show. And that was more about hating Matthew Fox than hating Jack.

So what's up with that? Is it because I care about women's rights that I look for realistic characters and I'm overly disappointed when they suck? I don't know. Or maybe I only respond to certain types of characters - because I like Christina Yang on Grey's Anatomy. I would use their real names, but I'm not because I don't think that's the point. I think if you put an actress I love in the same roles, I would hate them because of how one dimensional and shitty the character is. I like Ellen Pompeo but I don't particularly like Meredith Grey. I don't really like Sandra Oh, but I like Christina Yang. It's the same concept with Denzel Washington. In general, I don't like him. I imagine in real life he's probably sort of jerky and irritating, and something about him really bugs me. But he is an amazing actor and I love his movies (mostly - Man On Fire was awful).

Anyway, I wonder why this happens.















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