Sometimes we edit the films post post-production and pretend the end never happened at all. Most movies, even the great ones, we watch for their perfect middles. We have watered-down expectations when it comes to women in film.

I don’t claim this is universal, but many female viewers I’ve had conversations with over the years have expressed similar, if not identical, practices. You dissect their context away and relish them - sometimes for themselves, sometimes for the endings they didn’t have. You watch not so much for the arc (that’s almost always disappointing) but for certain arresting moments. Given the sameness of the flavors on offer, you become a sort of expert at spotting slight variations. Working Girl, He’s Just Not That Into You, Grease. Without thinking about it too hard I’ll approximate them as spunkiness, pathos, and transformation. You look for “girl movies.” Barring some truly wonderful exceptions, you get used to eating the same three meals over and over, forever. For one thing, you start actively seeking out stories where people don’t rule you out quite so much.

If you don’t get to be Indiana Jones and have to think about how he is with girls, if you have to wonder, while watching Treasure Island, whether any of the characters you loved would even talk to you, movies become kind of painful. Feeling simultaneously embarrassed at being so profligate with my sympathy and spiteful towards those who weren’t, I started watching movies the way I was supposed to: as a girl, specifically. When I realized the boys in my classes didn’t do the same thing - they refused to see themselves in female protagonists and found the prospect humiliating to contemplate - I felt I had overstepped my bounds.

Growing up in the eighties, I watched movies about boys and girls with equal relish, empathizing with the protagonists and getting totally absorbed in story without my parts getting consciously in the way. I suppose most girls remember when they became aware of themselves as specifically female viewers.

Movies with brave characters