The Four Types Of Women In Film

From STUPOR STUPOROUS's Women in Film:

In a study of the films from the 1930s to 1970s, historians have categorized four dominant types of roles that women played. The first one is the “Pillar of Virtue” types played by Doris Day or Julie Andrews. This category also features mothers and mammies such as Hattie McDaniel’s character in “Gone with the Wind.” The “Glamour Girl” range from sex goddesses such as Marilyn Monroe in “Bus Stop” to femme fatales such as Marlene Dietrich in “Blonde Venus.” The “Emotive Woman” is the sexually frustrated Rosalind Russell in “Picnic” and the seductive Elizabeth Taylor in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Thus, the last category, the “Independent” woman or the Katharine Hepburn type, is Barbara Streisand in “Funny Girl,” or Jane Fonda in “Klute,” the liberated woman. Throughout much of film history, women have been depicted as manipulative, sexually repressed, or sexually overt. There was also a lack of sisterhood and films with women interacting with other women in a positive light. In the 1950s, especially, we witnessed an era of “reaffirming male dominance and female subservience; movies showed women as breasts and buttocks, again idealizing women who were ‘pretty, amusing, and childish,’” (Butler, 145). Much of this female contempt has endured and remained, although it may not be as obvious as the previous decades. Nowadays, we see more sensationalized sexual roles for women as the trend began in the 70s. Women now are also shown as waifs similar to the 60s trend, which was a severe contrast to the idea image of the 50s. All in all, women are becoming an endangered species in films and taking increasingly less leading roles.