Producer's Tweets Reveal How Scripts Depict Women

"JANE, 28, athletic but sexy. A natural beauty. Most days she wears jeans, and she makes them look good." So reads a tweet by film producer Ross Putman, who's taken it on himself to draw attention to the way women are described in scripts. "These are intros for female leads in actual scripts I read," states @femscriptintros, which Putman launched Tuesday. He changes the names to Jane but keeps the descriptions unaltered. "JANE stands next to it (30's) dressed in a paramedic's uniform - blonde, fit, smokin' hot," reads one tweet. "JANE (late 20s) sits hunched over a microscope. She’s attractive, but too much of a professional to care about her appearance," reads another. Eliana Dockterman at Time calls the descriptions "startlingly ageist, sexist, and objectifying."

Charlie Jane Anders at io9 writes that it feels "creepy and weird" when the best descriptions writers can come up with for major female characters are "leggy" and "sexy." Juliet Bennett Rylah at LAist notes it's unsurprising the descriptions are "laughably focused on the character's looks." The descriptions are "a reminder of Hollywood and society’s obsession with women’s looks" and "women that are sex objects first and characters second," writes Carolyn Cox at the Mary Sue. Time reports this could explain why it's hard for actresses to find "roles where they're treated as more than sexual objects." A study released the same day Putman launched his Twitter account found women get only 33% of speaking roles in films. (Jennifer Lawrence opens up on how Hollywood treats—and pays—women differently.)