Mallory O'Meara Quotes

Ultimately, the important thing to companies isn't ethics. It's money and power. For decades, they've been happily complicit in this bullshit system as long as money was being made. Men like Harvey Weinstein aren't losing their careers because movie studios are growing spines and hearts. They're losing careers because of the Everest-esque mountain of damning evidence stacked against them and that the public outcry might make those studios lose money.

Women are the most important part of horror because, by and large, women are the ones the horror happens to.

Women have always been the most important part of monster movies. As I walked home one night, I realized why. Making my way down dark city streets to my apartment in Brooklyn, I was alert and on edge. I was looking for suspicious figures, men that could be rapists, muggers or killers. I felt like Laurie Strode in Halloween. Horror is a pressure valve for society's fears and worries: monsters seeking to control our bodies, villains trying to assail us in the darkness, disease and terror resulting from the consequences of active sexuality, death. These themes are the staple of horror films.

There are people who witness these problems only in scary movies. But for much of the population, what is on the screen is merely an exaggerated version of their everyday lives. These are forces women grapple with daily. Watching Nancy Thompson escape Freddy Krueger's perverted attacks reminds me of how I daily fend off creeps asking me to smile for them on the subway. Women are the most important part of horror because, by and large, women are the ones the horror happens to. Women have to endure it, fight it, survive it - in the movies and in real life. They are at risk of attack from real-life monsters. In America, a woman is assaulted every nine seconds.

Horror films help explore these fears and imagine what it would be like to conquer them. Women need to see themselves fighting monsters. That's part of how we figure out our stories. But we also need to see ourse

But, surprise folks, women get mad about things that don't have to do with men. Women feel anger and isolation just as intensely as men. Women have desires for power – destructive desires – that aren't satisfied with mean-spirited gossip and a bold lip color. Women need to be able to see themselves reflected in the monsters playing out these emotions on the big screen. Our only options shouldn't be either banishment to a shack in the woods or growing fangs and becoming part of a bloodthirsty sister-wife troupe. Women rarely get to weigh in on monster designs, but when she got the chance to, Millicent made it count.

Women don't need an idol to worship. We need a beacon to walk toward.

To the privileged, equality feels like oppression

At what point are women forgiven for not being supernaturally resilient Amazons who spend all their waking hours fighting injustice?

One hundred percent of the top American films of 1954, the year Creature from the Black Lagoon was released, were directed by men. Ninety-six percent of the top American films for 2016, the year I started writing this book, were directed by men. In sixty-two years, we have improved gender equality in American film directing by four percent. At this rate, we'll be colonizing Mars before we see an qual number of female directors.

The beauty of Milicent's life and work was, like that of many other women, purposefully hidden to rob her of her power and her influence. Milicent Patrick is the lady from the black lagoon and she's not alone. She's raised out of it now, but there are so many women – in every industry, living and dead – who are still in there. So many other stories are sunken in the depths of history and so many women are still shouldering the burden of harassment and abuse while trying to create. Thanks to technology and the bravery of countless women, the tides are finally changing.

After my initial disappointment, I realized that Milicent being a normal, non-royal was more important to her position as a role model. It was more inspirational. She didn't have superpowers or a magic wand. She was simply intelligent and savvy and good at what she did. We need women to be allowed to be simply good at what they do. We need them on set, in meetings, behind cameras and pens and paintbrushes. We need them to be themselves, to be human: ordinary and flawed. That way, more girls can see them and think "I can do that." That way, no one can look at them and say " She got that job because she's beautiful. She got that gig because she slept with someone."

Actually, she got hired because she was damn good.

Women don't get to be colossal monsters. Women don't get to fuck shit up.