Feminism in movies: refreshing or overplayed and extreme?

I don’t like the female lead action hero at all. The characters all seem one and the same. I usually prefer women actresses to be young, sexy, and passive.

Well you're entitled to your opinion I guess...I gather you're an old fashion type woman? Maybe you dust the house in high heels in pearls like June Cleaver

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Well when it comes to female action heroes, do the protagonists in Set It Off (1996) count? They are not exactly heroes, but in my opinion, it's the best female lead action thriller movie that I could think of.

What about Widows?

Widows was good too, Set it Off is just my particular my favorite female action movie

Of course June Cleaver wore high heels, it's the 1950s, it's like a law or something

I don't find that look attractive personally. If I see a woman dressed like that I would probably think she was a total prude, unless some guys like that?

I am sure that someone from the 50s seeing a picture of a person from the 1880s might have a similar response.

Are you trolling?

Or, for that matter, is everyone trolling?

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Yeah she was goodlooking back then. There are plenty of goodlooking women from the 50s and before, I just didn't thinkt much of the Leave it to Beaver example, where she is dressed like she is going to do cleaning. Just doesn't seem sexy or that attractive to me. Not saying a woman has to dress attractively under all circumstances but if a guy prefers cleaning style clothing, I just do not understand it.

Based off of that and this post, I'd say that it's very likely that least Tinkerman is trolloing us in general.

I don't know that prudish is the correct term. Perhaps this educational video might help shed some light on the conversation.

That was a good video. Well maybe prudish was the wrong word, but I wasn't sure what other word to use.

What if in The Stepford Wives, the male characters in Stepford wanted their wives to dress and behave real naughty and kinky, and wore naughty black leather, revealing outfits, and cleavage and push up braws, with naughty make up, smoked big cigars, and the works, etc.

But the main character woman did not want to be brainwashed like that once she found out, and then wants to take her daughter and escape the town. Would the movie have had a very different reaction then?

Another thing is, whenever I have film discussion with my friends and they mention female empowerment movies nowadays, I will ask them where they think it came from and they would say it's because of the Weinstein crimes. But is that true though, that if the Weinstein crimes had not have come out to the public in the last 3 years then there would be no female empowerment movies, or at least not to the degree that we are seeing?

I've said this before but the current kick ass, tough as hell, female leads in action films started with Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 (1992).

In the first Terminator Linda Hamilton played the atypical helpless female who needed a strong male to help her survive the onslaught of the unstoppable Terminator killing machine. But in T2 Linda buffed up and built some serious muscles. T2 made a point of the fact that her character was no longer a victim but was now one helluva a tough fighter. She really looked the part too!...As far as I know that's the genesis for the current trend of female 'tough gals.'

*I have no problem with actresses playing the lead in action/super hero type movies.

Yes T2 is one my most favorite movies. I thought maybe it started with Pam Grier or Ripley originally though, then after the 90s, it seems the female action hero died down for a bit, and then a resurgance recently, but maybe I am wrong.

One thing I noticed about movies nowadays is they do not like female characters being sexualized much at all now. In the way they dress they do not like provacative or revealing outfits.

But they also do not like sexualized femme fatale characters who enjoy sex a lot either. A movie like Basic Instinct for example, might not be allowed to be made today in Hollywood.

So it seems we are headed back to a non-sexualized version of women, kind of like how some men may have preferred women back in the 50s for example.

But I find this to be very ironic, because when the 70s came around, women wanted to get away from that 50s non-sexual representation of themselves, and they wanted to be more feminist in their sexuality. And men liked this too because it meant women could be more progressive in their sexual behavior.

But now that is considered to be regressive now, and the feminist view nowadays is to retread back to that idea of a woman who is non-sexualized, but also one who doesn't seem to have or enjoy sex with men as much either, because that seems to be more regressive to nowadays.

You don't see female characters seducing men as much in entertainment wanting sex from them, because if a woman wants sex from a man and tries to seduce him the character is considered weak then, it seems.

I just think it's become very ironic, because it seems that Hollywood's represenation of women seems to want to go back to what they wanted to escape from to an extent if that makes sense?

Sure, but I would respond that Hollywood's (and the media in general's) sexualization of women in previous decades tended to motivated less by a sincere desire to support female sexual empowerment post-Women's Lib, and much more by male executives looking to use that movement as a cover for an exploitative, sex sells mentality, with the reduced sexuality of modern films coming about less due to a return to a sort of 50's-style prudishness, and because of an overdue increase in cultural sensitivity in general (because, let's face it, regardless of how little skin the Hays Code allowed women to show back in Classical-era Hollywood, they still liked using women as "eye candy" just as much then as any other time). And, while modern films my seem less sexual in general, I'd say that that's because they have less gratuitous sexuality in them, and if you ask me, it's nothing but a good thing that Tully portrayed its female lead enjoying sex in a sincere, non-titillating manner, or that Fury Road fit some genuinely feminist themes inside all of its post-apocalyptic mayhem: