Admittedly, we’re a little slow to the punch (at least in blog years) in coming across this New York Times piece about “The Fempire” — a “power posse” of female screenwriters in Hollywood headed up by our gal Diablo Cody. Maybe it’s the fact that we would never expect to come across a serious article about gender dynamics in the film industry in the Sunday Styles section. Oh wait. We were right.
While we’ve waxed on about our Diablo love before, we found this article annoying because Deborah Schoeneman sidestepped the interesting contradiction here — “Don’t even try to credit their bankability to their looks.” vs. “Screenwriters usually don’t have stylists or publicists, yet the women said they feel pressure to look photogenic in a way that is not demanded of male screenwriters.” — opting instead to spin us a tale of Sex and the City-style best friendships, chock full of superficial details about Fempire fashion.
1. “black pants, brown high heels, amused gaze” 2. “struggling to keep her short blue dress from riding up” 3. “both gorgeous” 4. “four distinct styles of glamour that bear little resemblance to traditional images of behind-the-scenes talent” 5. “all four wear the same gold necklaces with tiny heart pendants inscribed with words that can’t be printed here” 6. “One recent evening, each woman had to check the label she was wearing when asked to identify it — Juicy Couture and Ella Moss were represented.” 7. “The other women lent or bought outfits for Ms. Cody…” 8. “‘“I love holding my ladies’ bags.'” 9. “where she battled her short blue dress”
Booooring (and kind of alienating too). Why couldn’t Schoeneman give us more juicy stuff, like that bit about Diablo dodging Steven Spielberg’s calls? Also: This is just a shot in the dark, but our guess is most Diablo Cody fans don’t love her because of her red carpet knowhow. Maybe Schoeneman’s editors at the NYT pigeonholed her into writing a pretty fluff piece, but we can’t help but think that a similiar feature on the Apatow crew would have landed in the Arts pages instead. And that, as Juno’s dad would say, makes us want to punch someone in the weiner.