Girly Things

So I've been a little busy lately. I don't really know why or where my time is necessarily going, but I'm busy.

Also, recently, I've been finding myself smack dab in the middle of a bunch of girly stuff, not necessarily girly stuff as in shoe shopping or putting on make-up, but girly in the sense of things that have brought the fact that I'm a woman to the surface. How so you may ask? Well. . .

Last Wednesday I went to this really interesting forum hosted by the animation guild. Basically they had asked actress Geena Davis to come speak to their union members about her foundation See Jane. In short it's an organization that is working for the cause of sexual equality in media or more specifically in children's broadcasting. Her organization "commissioned ground-breaking analysis research by USC's Annenberg School for Communication analyzing the top 100 G-rated movies as well as TV created for kids ages 0-11." Basically, to save time let me tell ya this. The average of female to male characters in children's entertainment programming is 5 males to every 1 female. All they are trying to do is get the ratio to be about 50-50 so that children of all sexes can have a role modle type character to look up to.





What I found more interesting than the "cause" of the forum (which I kinda agree with, but mostly I agree with there being a good story and the sex of the character being what ever fits the character best) was the small bit of research the union did on the male to female employment ratio currently in place at the studios. Mind you these numbers are pertaining to the number of females and males CURRENTLY union members and not taking into account all the people (like me) not lucky enough to be in a union shop. (Oh, and if there's any spelling errors, which I'm sure there are, it's not my fault. I copied the ditto they gave us VERBATUM!)

Gender Breakdown of Employed Active Membership as of October 10, 2006

Producers................................ 8.0% (2 of 25)
Directors................................14.9% (20 out of 134)
Writers..................................10.8% (10 out of 93)
Art Directors............................11.1% (2 out of 18)
Visual Development.......................13.1% (8 out of 61)
Story Art................................13.8% (51 out of 370)
Layout...................................17.8% (41 out of 230)
Model Designers (characters & props).....21.4% (36 out of 168)
Background...............................25.6% (34 out of 133)
2D Animators.............................21.3% (50 out of 235)
3D Animators and Modellers...............13.0% (47 out of 362)
compositors..............................29.2% (21 out of 72)
Tech Directors...........................13.8% (42 out of 304)
Checkers, etc............................34.0% (35 out of 103)

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Industry Wide.............................17.3% (399 out of 2308)

SEE DAD!!! I'm not lying when I said that it feels like animation is a "boy's club" sometimes!! There's barely any girls in it!

On a slightly bitter note about the meeting, towards the end of the meeting the working professional women that had decided to attend the meeting were wondering where all the women were and why there weren't more now a days and that kind of stuff, and I wanted to scream "they can't get their foot in the fuckin' door with all the boys hookin' their boyfriends up!!!" But, I just sat there and told myself I needed to just work harder on my portfolio cause there's gotta be something missing from it still since I can't get a test. . .

Anyway, on to other girly stuff. This weekend I FINALLY stumbled upon some kick ass cookbooks from the 1950's. I had to post some of those for all to see. Back in the day they used to put quick little illustrations in there. Really REALLY simple ones that were only two tones. They are just too charming. In fact, they are so charming I'm going to totally let it slide that they were in a Betty Crocker cook book and that Betty Crocker is part of General Mills evil empire.

Also, were you aware that Bisquik has been around since the 1950's? I seriously learn something new everyday.

Now, if you click on all the images EXCEPT the little piggy, you can see larger versions of the kick ass cookbook illustrations. If I were you, I'd definately click on the little lamb/sheep. I thought it was kinda funny. :)