It is no secret that Hollywood is sexist.

Recently, the headlines lit up with the news of a hack on Sony Production Company. This hack ultimately brought to light Jennifer Lawrence’s salary for "American Hustle," and more importantly, the much higher salaries of her male counter parts. This sparked Lawrence to write an outraged essay about the gender pay gap in Hollywood.

The controversy doesn’t stop there though, in her Oscar acceptance speech last year for her supporting actress role in "Boy Hood,"Patricia Arquette called out Hollywood, saying, “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all.” The list goes on, with such A-listers as Emma Thompson, Geena Davis, Carey Mulligan and even Meryl Streep all calling out sexism in Hollywood. This outrage is not unfounded, according to Slate magazine, the men on Forbes’ list of top-paid actors for 2013 made, “Two and a half times as much money as the top-paid actresses.” Which means that Hollywood’s best paid actresses made a mere 40 cents for every dollar that the best paid men made.

Obviously, this inequality is a problem, but there are bigger problems in the world, right? You’re probably thinking, “Oh boo-hoo, Angelina Jolie only has a net worth of $145 million while Brad Pitt has a comfy $240 million…poor woman, how can she even go on?!

But you know what? It does affect you. It only makes sense that this inferior view of women does not stop at money. These producers see women as economically less valuable than men, and this mentality can’t help but to spill into the movies themselves, effecting anyone who has ever seen a movie or TV show. According to Variety Magazine, women made up only 12 percent of protagonists in the top grossing films of 2014. In secondary roles, females are still grossly underrepresented, comprising 29 percent of major characters and 29.2 percent of all speaking characters. This disparity cannot even be chalked up to audiences that are a majority male because according to The Motion Picture Association of America, in 2014 the majority of movie goers were actually female.

As a society, we cannot help to be partly products of the media we are so constantly inundated with. So what is it teaching us, consciously or subconsciously, if we are shown worlds in our art where women are always either taking the back seat to a man or are not there at all?

Even when the female characters are there, they are traditionally portrayed in movies and on TV not as versatile human beings, but as one of several archetypes. In a traditional big blockbuster movie, particularly those aimed at young audiences, a girl fulfills one of three roles: the sensual prize, the bitch, or the dumb one. Jeff Smith argues in his article "Normalizing Male Dominance: Gender Representation in 2012 Films" that “In these roles women are overtly feminine, have weak character, lack confidence, have an identity that is tied to a man or need to be saved by a man.” (Smith)

For example, in the 2012 film "The Amazing Spider-Man," Peter Parker is shown as a nerdy underdog character, a loner who is obsessed with science and photography and above all, Gwen Stacy. He hardly knows the pretty, over-achieving blonde, but obsesses over her beauty, even setting a far away picture of her as his desktop screen saver. This type of fawning and obsession would not be seen as acceptable were the genders in this situation reversed. When a boy pursues a presumably uninterested girl, he is seen as sweet and determined, while were a girl to do the same for a boy, she would be seen as crazy and unrealistic. It’s this type of gender role inconsistency that sends the message that a girl is something a man deserves, that no matter how nerdy he is he will get her in the end, as in Spider-Man. In this case, Gwen Stacy is portrayed as the sensual prize for the leading man, because once Spider-Man defeated enough villains, he consequently got the girl. This sends a message to young girls that if a man pursues them hard enough, she owes him herself. Perhaps even more disturbingly, this message is also apparent to young boys, who then live their lives feeling owed the affection of girls or feeling that this affection is needed to affirm their manhood.

A prime example of gender role inconsistency is in the popular 2004-romance movie "A Cinderella Story." The protagonist, Sam, is a frumpy smart girl, with a big crush on the handsome football player, Austin. The movie begins with Austin dating a beautiful but cruel girl, who likes to make Sam’s life hell. This girl fulfills the stereotypical “bitch” role. She is portrayed with her only apparent character trait being her cruelty. There is no three dimensional exploration of her character, no moment where the audience realizes the inner struggles that led to her meanness, just simply a girl presented as one thing: a bitch. This movie ends with Sam going through a full beauty make over and impressing Austin with her beauty at the schools Halloween dance. Well what’s wrong with that, you may ask. She ends up happy, right? This may be true, but at what cost? Austin only sees her as worthy when she has become sexually desirable, despite the fact that throughout the movie it is clear he enjoys her personality. The message this representation is sending young girls is that you can have the boy you want, but only if you make yourself beautiful enough for him to accept you. For boys, they’re learning that it is a woman’s responsibility to make herself alluring for him.

To fulfill my final stereotypical female role, I now call on a fan favorite, "Mean Girls." In this movie, every stereotypical female role is shown, but in particular, the stupid girl is exemplified perfectly. Karen Smith is the beautiful sidekick of Regina George. She is blonde, curvy, blue-eyed and about as intelligent as a sea anemone. Throughout the movie Karen is shown saying absurdly stupid things, even claiming that her breasts can predict the weather. Are their women who are as stupid this? Perhaps. But what separates them is that air headed is not all that they are, real women have many layers.

Summarily, what is the most disturbing about the portrayal of women in film and TV is how shallow their characters are. They are displayed as these easy to understand stereotypes instead of taking the time to delve into further character development, which would consequently make the women portrayed more than just objects to be admired. As John Berger argues in his book Ways of Seeing, that due to all of these flaws in gender portrayal, it makes it increasingly easier for women to “turn herself into an object-and most particularly an object of vision: a sight” (Berger 194) This is all popular culture is telling a woman she should be, because all she is presented with is portrayals of women who are not portrayed as real multi faceted people, but simply as lazy archetypes with pretty faces.

Though we have come a long way in the way women are viewed in society, we still battle subtle undercurrents of sexism in our lives daily. We have been taught through movies, TV, advertising, music and all other forms of media, that women are expected to fit certain roles. Due to this conditioning, women may subconsciously try to fit into literal roles, such as the film and TV stereotypes of the sensual prize, the dumb one or the bitch, or perhaps subtler roles, such as the role of the passive accepter of sexual experiences. No matter what role women feel media is telling them to fulfill, one thing remains the same; that is not the medias responsibility.

It should be up to every individual to decide who and what they are, but with constant subliminal messages of inferiority flooding ones mind, this can become very difficult. It is for this reason that I believe that current and future media makers need to strive to portray realistic and strong images of women. That is, women as they really are: multi faceted and just as complex as men. Hopefully, if this change is made, men will begin to see women more consistently as the emotional, mental and sexual equals that they are. Perhaps, even more importantly, women will begin to see themselves this way as well, as Berger argues “This unequal [gender] relationship is so deeply embedded in our culture that it still structures the consciousness of many women. They do to themselves what men do to them. They survey, like men, their own femininity.” (Berger) Perhaps the leading ladies of Hollywood are right, maybe equal pay will be the first step to a more holistically equal Hollywood. Our art and our media is a reflection of who we are, and I think it is time we take a long look in the mirror and think about what it is we would like to see looking back at us.