(This continues to be the case, despite over ten years of Milla Jovovich making big box office as an action hero. The same kind of factor applies to Will Smith - black mainstream action heros are vanishingly few, despite Tyler Perry's work in that field. It's a case of producers saying "well, yes, Milla/Will brought the money in, but that's because she/he's Milla/Will, not because people want female and black heroes".)
Oh, just go read the article, it says it much better than I can, since my ability to speak about my feminism is not particularly well-formed. It's cool.
This attitude, though it took a lot of years to come out, was planted in me by my mother, who is awesome, not least for her ability to drink any man under the table. But she's mostly awesome for taking her decision-making as much as possible out of the hands of the men around her, and using it herself. And she grew up at a time when even the feminists were looking at you funny if you didn't have a man. She also taught me that being aware of why you're working within the status quo (using makeup, wearing high heels, dyeing my hair to get: Attention, better jobs, a chance at being let into the halls of power) gives you more power to buck the status quo when needed (which, in her case, was getting a job at The Economist where she could write left-leaning articles that would be read without prejudice by right-leaning people). I can't claim any such noble goal, and it took marrying a feminist man to get me on track, but part of being a feminist is believing that you really are any man's equal, and acting on it. I'm doing okay so far.
Thanks, Mum. Happy Christmas.
