Missing heroines: Why Hollywood believes only men can save the world

Battle On! You rock, stardawn!
We need a Xena Movie :)
A Wonder Woman movie would be welcome too. When I think back, Buffy was (and still is, in comics) a strong female role model. And right now, we have on tv Once upon a Time, where the Savior is a female character. And Lost Girl, where we have a Succubus as main character. And Game of Thrones...
I created an account here only to answer to this article and give my support! Get over it, men. We are not saying you are stupid and can't save the world (half of Japanese anime proves the contrary). We just want to be told on a big screen that we are not less than Batman.

Some of these comments make no sense to me. Females can't or don't have to be able to save the world? What bull! We need female heroes to teach our girls that they can be strong. As far as not making any money? So... Hunger Games, Divergent, and Frozen made no money? We need strong women to show our girls how to grow up independent, strong, and female! What we need is a Xena Movie. Talking about ultimate female.. who has NO superpowers, is NOT a goddess, or an alien. She's a girl from a small fishing village who rose up and made mistakes, but the realized what it was in life that was worth fighting for -- Love! She protected the innocent, the weak, the oppressed, the underprivileged, and those that are different or challenged, all those that can't fight for themselves. We need a real Sheroes, that teaches our girls that they can overcome what ever crap life throws at them, and still come up on top. We need heroes like Xena!

re: SCfan

Good call. Ziva (NCIS), Hetty (NCIS: LA), & Fiona (Burn Notice) were/are some of my favorite characters on TV.

Want to see strong world saving women? Try TV. Current shows like CRISIS for instance seems to be run by the gals. Also the NCIS shows. Covert Affairs, when it is on. Burn Notice had a very strong female character. There are several others. And they get a lot more viewers than most movies. So, if you want movies, maybe we can bring back Angelina Jolie and her Laura Croft role. The recent James Bond movies had a strong older women running the whole agency MI6. Just some suggestions.

Ditto to all the comments above. Men are portrayed as dumb buffoons in mainstream entertainment all the time.

Women in modern media are generally portrayed as sensitive and intelligent, with their male counterparts as kind but incompetent, or just plain stupid. In Western society, girls are given special status in the medical and educational arena, with all kinds of special programs to aid their progress.

I find it highly offensive that the author of this article complains that there aren't more female superheroes. I guess she wants to make sure men know their place.

Why must women be able to save the world, get beat up and beat people up in order to be equal. With the exception of Superheros men are very negatively portrayed by Hollywood. Can't trust us to even watch our own kids, because we are such idiotic buffoons. So we have one or two genre's of mass media fiction that still portray us in a somewhat positive light.

Or are we not even allowed that small sup to our feelings?

My girls (and boys) have a great heroine in our home: their mother. They also have grandmothers and many other wonderful women around them. I do not look to Hollywood to provide my kids with any sort of role model, be it male or female. Let them make what they are going to make. My kids do not have to partake. If we do decide to view a film, the moral of the story far outweighs the gender of the hero/heroine in my view. Ironically, the most recent film we have taken them to see is Frozen, and for anyone who cares, I think that delivers in the heroine department.

"Miss Potter" is a lovely film about a strong woman who doesn't let difficult situations or people get in her way. No one does super-stunts or beats someone up, but good lessons are taught.

Well, I for one, love Selene (Underworld). Brave, strong, sexy, beautiful, and can kill vampires wearing platform boots and tight leather pants and an overcoat! If that's not heroic, I don't know what is!

I'm pleasantly surprised at this. I can't really say anything that hasn't already been said; thank you all for your comments! I mean it!

to BYR

Give me the only superhero w/o any superpowers... Batman.

re: rhappahannock

"Look at all the TV shows, advertisements, and much of the current movies. Fathers and men are portrayed as lazy, immature, unrefined, unintelligent buffoons."

Agreed. Homer Simpson & Peter Griffin are a riot but not representative of the male population at all.

This is a bunch of hooey. Look at all the TV shows, advertisements, and much of the current movies. Fathers and men are portrayed as lazy, immature, unrefined, unintelligent buffoons. Girls are portrayed as successful, powerful, "Brave," and educated. Even in movies like "How to train your Dragon" the male hero is rather effeminate. Hand-wringing over superheroes in movies being male and somehow oppressing women is ridiculously misguided.

Look at the number of workplace deaths, and what percentage is male vs. female. About 93% are male. Somehow, the feminists never want to bring up that number in talking about equal pay. When feminists devalue homemaking and try to turn all women into men they are rejecting part of their core being.

Finally, differences in enrollment in college between men and women show a sustained bias against males, as otherwise it should be 50-50. Someone needs to start up a lawsuit against colleges based on Title IX to end this discrimination. Shouldn't Title IX be about academics and not sports?

They want us to believe that Hollywood is showing us that women are weaker than men?
Riiiight.
They have been sending the message that men are dolts for a generation now.

Depends on how. But I would still take Superman over Wonder Woman. And Marvel beats them all.

It has to do with supply and demand. If Hollywood would make more money starring a woman in an action movie they would do it.

It is only about money. Money rules the world.

Sad but true.

Well, at least we men can still be the ones to save the world in the fictional world of Hollywood. In the real world, we're getting our butts kicked by women in terms of getting undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, finding jobs, etc. Maybe we men need these superhero movies to light a flame under us and get us moving! Not that things should be a competition, but if they were, it would seem one team is much more highly motivated than the other, and the gap is only going to get wider.

Sorry, it turns out girls and boys are just different. I know this may shock some people as they expect that we are going to ultimately be the same. But that is not how it works in nature, in life or in the land of Super Hero's.

Just get over it and relax. Women are wonderful and save the world in so many other ways then the destruction of aliens and bad guys. Perhaps girls just don't blow things up as well as men do.

So I guess what this article is saying is that girls need the positive role model of being able to blow up entire cities, beat the day lights out the bad guys and thus save the world.

I am just going to disagree and be glad that women have not been lowered to the job of "saving the world."