How Lovely to be a Woman

I love Shannon Hale. Seriously, right now I would probably have to say she is my favorite author and (local) celebrity.

I know I've written about her before, but if you still don't know who Shannon is, she has written some books I absolutely love. Most of them are for younger readers, or at least on the YA level. One of her books, The Princess Academy, was a Newbury Honor book a few years back. She also wrote some more grown up books, Austenland and The Actor and the Housewife, that I adored. I don't want to say "adult" because that gives the wrong impression. Neither of them is what I would call inappropriate in any way. They just deal with more grown up issues.

I love reading Shannon's blog. She's hilarious, and she brings up things that I totally agree with. Like, why would you make hipster jeans for two year old girls? They're completely impractical. Some of her more recent posts have been about the shrinking roles of women in movies, especially in animated movies, and what this teaches children.

I have to agree. I think it's pretty sad that the male:female ratio is so distorted. In reality, the ratio is close to 50:50. In many movies, it's close to 10:1. It's not even that they don't portray women as funny, strong, or able to take the lead. The characters just aren't there. It's just not realistic.

I hope this changes. That studios see that it's important to make it a more natural balance. But as was also discussed on the blog, this is highly dependant on money. We have to support those movies out there that have female leads. Show those studios that we shouldn't be teaching the world that this is what we think of women. Especially the children.

Oh, and if you're interested in reading her blog, here's the link http://www.squeetus.com/stage/main.html