In my internet pursuing the other morning, I came across THIS POST ..
from the Mountain Film Festival in Telluride, Colorado. It is a short response to why women are not better represented in the adventure films they preview every Memorial Day during the adventure film festival in Telluride and at other venues throughout the year.
I gave my short answer, answer #1 here, in the comments on their post. Sadly, one hint to the problem, is that I was the only 2nd person to comment in four days.
Here's my long answer, if your interested...
The discussion of women Not behind the camera of Adventure films is pretty much identical to the discussion of why women, who are taking the lead in industries such as law and publishing, areas I am familiar with, are still horribly underrepresented in other creative fields like the Fine Arts, Commercial Illustration and behind the camera in Film. For more on the utter inequality in front of the camera, go HERE.
Why? I don't know, but I can guess...
Guess #1 ...
Success for women, in general, there are always exceptions, won't come until women are not so highly praised for their attribute in front of the camera. When One of Vanity Fair's big pre- Oscar features, "Slave of the Red Carpet" is about the power in Tinsel Town stylists hold including this quote, big and bold in the center of the page...
" Young girls can get famous today without having huge roles in blockbusters, just by having style," says Fremar. ( Vanity Fair March 2014, page 227)
yikes!
How about, instead of Julia Roberts, half dressed sitting amongst actors fully dressed...
how about Julia is fully dressed and the guys can be half dress, that would be something new, or how about we just focus on these amazing actors and actresses?
Did you know that much of the hype of Georgia O'Keeffe in the beginning wasn't her painting but a photography show of her including nudes put up by her lover Alfred Stieglitz?
When the actor Dustin Hoffman, getting ready for the movie TOOTSIE, tearfully confesses, discussed HERE in a Huffington Post article, he has opted out of knowing women based on their appearance ( how attractive and thin they are), hum?
And Hoffman is not the only one, according to Dove Soap, 6 out of 10 little girls stop doing active things because of body issues...
Guess #2 and it is Cosmic or Genetic...
and specific to Adventure films. Far fewer women have the gene and it is as simple and epic as that. Yes, I am all for equality, doubt anyone would argue that after what I just wrote. Actually, I know someone would but please don't.
Men and women were created, wired, what ever you want to say, differently. Adam was cursed to desire after the earth, Eve was cursed to desire after, well, men. Different and equal are to different things.
Hillarys, Shackletons, Powells and Hannibals find first ascents, new river and continents to explore. Bull Elk have antlers, Male Prairie Chickens have showy feathers and the females, they get to be brown and hide in the bush with the little ones.
I came to terms with this inequality, when putting horses away that had gotten out of the pasture, I watched a mating pair of bald eagles...
I'm sorry, but contrary to my husband, "Because it is there" is not a good enough reason for me to sleep on rocks, eat sand and try and figure out how to continue potty training a toddler in the wilderness for a week.
Don't get me wrong, I have forded plenty of rivers, climbed my fair share of mountains and slept out in some exotic places including eating something swimming in a broth of hot chilies while the Mexican village women were generously slapping just made tortillas on stone griddles behind us, until my lips felt like they were going to burn off. I went to Art School, love film and could have built a career behind the camera. Except, like many, many women, I met a boy, fell in love and chose not to fly very far away for awhile.
Guess #3 Someone has to stay back with the wagons, or with the toddler being potty trained...
I would make the same decision today and am very grateful to my husband who works hard to allow me to stay home, though it is a little disheartening when every year the Social Security Administration sends you a letter to let you know that for the past twenty years you have not paid into your retirement.
We have continued to take our girls into the wilderness. Our oldest first outing was up to Mesa Verde National Park, though in the winter, the pictures are of us taking turns holding a mini little red and blue baby bag, which she was tucked all warm in. We have pictures of the same bag, five years later, when our second was a tiny baby, this time in Yellowstone.
We have had every kid friendly accoutrement there is from baby bags, to backpacks to come along bike attachments. I was amazed at how far my husband got up the Klondike trail near Moab pulling our daughter in one of those. Like many families in the West, we just keep upgrading sizes of mountain bikes and skis.
One many occasion, I have had to be the voice of reason or sanity. X-naying flyfishing while baby was in backpack. Or declaring, somewhat crazily, balanced in the middle of a shale slide, that this was Not a kindergartner appropriate hike!
But someone has to be the voice of reason, asking "How many Osprey packs do we really need?" standing in line for one of their local's sale at 7 o'clock in the morning. Or getting on others to clean out their day packs so I won't find hardened cheese sticks, moldy apples and fermenting CamelBaks weeks later.
Someone has to think of logistics, how many pants do you need for the potty training to continue at 8,000 ft.? When and where is naptime going to hit. When everyone else went off to scuba dive with the turtles in Maui, I rode the Pineapple train with those too little to swim. I confess I hate water, but my point is still valid.
And then the kids get older and can out bike, out hike you, so you go half way up the trail, send them ahead with their mountain goat father and then sit down and sketch the crazy people bungee jumping off Corona Arch near Moab...
and then hear just weeks later someone has died doing something like that and being one, you think of their mom...
Which brings us to my last answer for why more women are not featured in festivals like the Telluride Mountain Film Festival. Do read their response, they are not just looking for Extreme documentaries like First Ascents and thrill rides. They want other films on the cultures and issues facing the wilderness and the people living there.
I'm not sure anyone would want to watch my films.They would be kind of a "downer" in a feastive adventure festival, pretty much focused on the cost of things.
I have no desire to do documentaries, my interest is in story and feature films but if I was, here are a few films, as a women I'd make...
From The Guardian... a film on Nepal now requiring climbers to bring down their trash, and a couple kilos of what is sitting up there, including human remains...
Way to go! That's lesson #1 for preschoolers, "Clean up, Clean up, everybody do your share!"
On the same subject, is a blip I heard on NPR, HERE of the terrible toil to the families of Serpas killed on Mt. Everest...
Though traditionally climbers will pass a hat for the widows, most of that money is spent on lavish funerals, leaving little for their families to live on.
I don't know if there is a documentary on this, but would have loved to go along with Brooklyn Illustrator Sophie Blackall, who took markers and paper to a children's school in Rwanda on a Save the Children, UK Trip...
the country just healing from Civil War, near the "Gorillas in the Mist" mountains. Read about and see the amazing trip, HERE.on her blog.
Inspired by KIDS WITH CAMERA , an amazing documentary showing India, a third world country, by a child's eye, I'd give cameras to the kids I now work with out on the Navajo and Ute reservations and in the isolated communities of the Four Corners and let them show the rest of us their world of double wide trailers, trips to Walmart with their grandparents in traditional broom skirts, kerchiefs and turquoise jewelry, trips to the Sell Barn with their favorite goat, their hidden forts amongst sage brush and cottonwoods and their rooms at home of bare mattresses on dirty floors. Some of it beautiful and some is not so pretty...
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I compared Ralston, with no attachment then, no wife, no kids, who as a young man was stuck by a boulder in the Maze district of Canyonlands, Utah, cut his arm off, after five days to...
McAuley left behind a widow and a small son.
Seems like every Outside Magazine I pick up as an ode' to someone great falling from a Mountain or disappearing somewhere. If I was doing a documentary, after the glow is done and we have moved on to other accolades, I'd go back and interview those widows, those fatherless children and ask them if they think it was worth it?
I leave you with a newpaper clipping, not that much different from what one might find in the back of a current Outside Magazine...
Most women's minds are on other things, I'm afraid.
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