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Gender Stereotypes Of Femininity In Film

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Is it true to say that the representation of women and femininity has had limited development over the last 25 years… or would it be more accurate to say that these representations have dramatically changed? Has stereotyping become less accurate and more common or has the Romantic Comedy genre developed its representations to break female stereotypes? This investigation aims to explore these questions and, ultimately, to evaluate if the representation of femininity has developed over the last 25 years in addition to finding out to what extent the female role within Romantic Comedy has changed. Exploring the representations of female characters by comparing and contrasting the representation of femininity in the chosen texts; Pretty Woman (1990) directed by Garry Marshall and 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) directed by Gil Junger to Love, Rosie (2014) directed by Christian Ditter. 

‘The shortened term "romcom", first recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary in 1971, carries implications of a film …show more content…

Statistics show that females have been losing out in the film industry, female protagonists within film have dropped from 16% (in 2013) to 14% (2014 statistics) within the top 100 films on IMDB3. Showing the decline in equal representation of females. Women make over 50% of the population in the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Japan. This would suggest, statistically, if there was to be any significant inequality between male and female lead characters, within film - female leads would be featured more often. After carrying out a self-conducted interview (of 20 participants), I found that, over 15 participants thought that females were represented inaccurately within Romantic Comedies. This highlights that the public recognise there is a limited representation of females within Romantic

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