Female animators draw back from sex bombs and nerd girls

The California Institute of the Arts was created partly by Walt Disney’s desire to bring more top-flight animators into the profession. And it has during its 47 years, though for a long time almost all were men.

Now, nearly three-quarters of CalArts’ more than 250 animation students are women, and there’s a new goal: ensure that when they land jobs, they get to draw female characters reflective of the real world and not just the nerds, sex bombs, tomboys or ugly villains who proliferate now.

“Male villains, for example, can be any shape or size. But female villains are usually in their menopausal or postmenopausal phases. They’re older, they’re single, they’re angry,” said Erica Larsen-Dockray, who teaches a class for CalArts’ experimental animation program.

To call attention to that cartoonish reality, CalArts has played host the past two years to “The Animated Woman Symposium on Gender Bias”. This year it focused on the roles of “Sidekicks, Nerd Girls, Tomboys and More”.

During a recent two-hour symposium, nearly a dozen student researchers questioned why almost all female sidekicks look like nerds. Also why female heroes like Kim Possible are over-the-top beautiful. And why there are so few gay, lesbian and transgender characters.

“What are nerd-girl stereotypes? They have glasses, they’re shy, they’re awkward, they have some freckles going on,” said film-video student and artist Madison Stubbs as she flashed drawings of several, including two of the most popular: Velma from ScoobyDoo and Meg Griffin of Family Guy.

There’s a reason for such drawings and scenarios, said Marge Dean, president of the industry group Women in Animation: men still fill animation’s writing rooms and director’s chairs.

“Many, many, many women are going to animation schools. At CalArts, it’s over 70 percent. But yet if you start looking at women in creative roles, the last number we have is only 22 percent,” said Dean, whose organization tracks figures through schools and industry groups.

In an effort to boost those numbers, CalArts faculty invites studio representatives to campus for events like portfolio days and maintains a close relationship with groups like Dean’s, which is pushing the studios to have a creative workforce of half women and half men by 2025.