What About the Ladies?

[Leirin]

What ever went wrong with female nerds, for one? I'd like to see a female nerd in an animated feature once...

Perhaps Sam from Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs?

[IncredigirlVirginia]

Oh yes, I love Sam. That's not Pixar, though.

[mentalguru]

Just an odd thought. Could this be considered off topic?

In Monsters Inc, Betty (and Marge) are both the only clearly identified females who work on Sulley's scare floor, and they are both assistants (and the latter of which is only really identificable as female due to her name, as she's spoken to by Mike:

"Hey, Marge, hey how was jury duty?").

I... guess one or two of the other scarers who never spoke could be female too since all but Randall have their surnames up there (I would have assumed Marge was male otherwise if it wasn't for her name. Seriously.) But then I 'd have to see whether or not they were all seen in the locker room/rest room (which are likely to be seperated on the basis of gender really aren't they).

Sometimes gender is pretty easy in Monsters Inc (Celia and Roz versus Waternoose and Sulley) though it can be hard to tell with some of the monsters. At least it is with Marge without her obvious name!

It makes me wonder if mistakes ever happen when the physical diversity of people there is so large. Do people get... mixed up?

Perhaps they're simply more used to looking out for little things and indications unlike a human so it isn't as much of a bother, or it's just an occasional social faux pas on the level of getting someones age wrong. In some cases because it's understandable while embarassing and a little insulting depending on the person and how personally sensitive they are to that sort of thing. IDK.

Yes I am aware this is a very random thought to be having. But I did get an odd thought when I thought back to the slow motion scarer walk, one of the monsters does make me wonder on their gender on some level too.

[Nausicaa]

Well, I'm guessing that in the Monster world, either most monsters get used to being mistaken for the opposite the birds and the bees and there isn't anything offensive about it, or that monsters can pick up on visual clues that tell each other what their gender is. Like movement or something a human couldn't see about their physical person. Clothes and makeup might be used by some monsters to make it clear what the birds and the bees they are.

Yeah, I thought that some of the scare floor monsters looked more typically feminine.

[IncredigirlVirginia]

Maybe the males and females look different to each other, and we don't notice because we don't see them every day, and...we're not monsters. It's like a stupid hick mixing up a Japanese man with a Taiwanese man, sort of. No experience in the field, and they all look the same.

[Pixar Builder]

I know that this had probably been said before, but wasn't the main emotional storyline with EVE rather than the titular character himself? I mean, WALL•E sort of remains as a static character throughout the entire film and it's really EVE's emotional storyline that we follow. She's the one that ultimately changes in the film, so I always thought of her being the main protagonist.

[IncredigirlVirginia]

You make a good point there, Pixar Builder. Wall-E never changes as far as personality goes, so I guess they just decided by the movie's name that he was the main, although Nemo isn't the main character in Finding Nemo...

[Leon K Fox]

Oh, wonderful. The sexism topic has made It's way into my favorite animation studio. Joy.

I'm one of those people who enjoys a good movie whether the protagonist is a dude or a female. I guess the only time I actually loved a movie because of a heroine is Mulan.

I think I may just love you for saying that.

Seriously, THIS.