The Terror of an All-Female Film Crew
I recently worked on a film where nearly all the department heads were women and let me tell you, I barely knew how to function without all those men around. I nearly forgot to always be on guard to deflect unwanted compliments. The act of tramping down my emotions when a male coworker tries to pass off one of my ideas as his own, has nearly been eradicated as one of my special skills. What the hell am I going to list on my resume now? That I’m great at problem-solving and being part of a team? Gross!
The act of showing up each morning and just being able to do my job was jarring. For instance, I discovered that I don’t actually like coffee. For the last ten years, when I would grab a cup of coffee in the afternoon, I would fetch it in an attempt to get out of an uncomfortable conversation with a man complaining about how much of his money his wife was spending while he was working. On this show, I found myself mindlessly grabbing coffee at 3:30 PM, taking a sip, and thinking, “This is totally burned.” Interestingly enough, I also discovered that craft service people don’t know what to do with all the afternoon avoidance coffee that is no longer needed.
There’s a not-so-quiet harrumphing going around Hollywood that hiring more female crew members, or seeking out people of color, or anyone who isn’t a middle-aged white man, is reverse discrimination to…
