A Seat at the Table

Behind the camera, Hollywood's commitment to gender parity is still stuck in development.

- Por Lauren Puckett-Pope

Barbie made progress look so painless. In Greta Gerwig's blockbuster, Barbies of Barbie Land operated under the blissful belief that sexism didn't exist. The presidency, the Supreme Court, Nobel Prize winners, construction workers, doctors-all female. This was a fantasy sold by a toy company, of course, but an eerily convincing one. And its magic seemed to translate directly to our world when, in July 2023, Gerwig celebrated the biggest debut in box office history for a female-directed film, after years of well-publicized industry initiatives on behalf of the post-#MeToo, post-Time's Up, post-#OscarsSoMale era. Gerwig's extraordinary success seemed the sort of bellwether women behind the camera in Hollywood had long awaited.

I cried, because I feel like a new precedent has been set, says director, writer, and producer Emma Seligman (Bottoms; Shiva Baby). Even if I know there's so much conversation around what that means.

What that means remains the sticking point. Barbie's utopia provided an uncanny blueprint for the state of Hollywood today, wherein rose-colored lenses obscure a harsher truth. Just a few high-profile cases can skew our perceptions of reality, says Martha M. Lauzen, PhD, a professor at San Diego State University and founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film. And the reality is indeed darker than Barbie's success might suggest. We don't want to think that we have seen such minimal progress in a quarter of a century, Lauzen adds. But the numbers tell the story. The numbers don't lie.