Why does Jodie Foster look like a boy?
It took a while to realize, hey thats a girl, and... hey thats jodie foster under there!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFtYpLV4EPo
Until puberty raises its ugly/pretty head, some boys looks like girls, and some girls look like boys. Martin Scorsese wanted Jodie to play the role of a tomboy, and she did it quite well. Two years later, he cast her again as a teen prostitute in "Taxi Driver," and no one mistook her for a boy then.
shareI love Jodie but I have always thought she carried herself and spoke more like a man than a woman, or more like a boy than a girl.
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Agreed. It also seems to me that 'tomboy' girls were a lot more common in the 70s than they are today.
It seems like it wasn't until the '80s that teenage girls really started going femme. Maybe mall culture and movies like "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "Flashdance" had something to do with it. In the '70s you had bands like the Runaways and movies like "Carrie" to serve as role models. And by the way, "Local Hero" is an excellent film!
shareIt seems like it wasn't until the '80s that teenage girls really started going femme. Maybe mall culture and movies like "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "Flashdance" had something to do with it. In the '70s you had bands like the Runaways and movies like "Carrie" to serve as role models.
Yes, I think there are myriad cultural influence. I agree that the media starting in the 80s began to glamorize and, in conventional terms at least, to feminize young girls, emphasizing adult hairdos, dress and makeup.
I also think the tomboy look got one last flourish as a spillover of the late 60s/early 70s hippy look. Thus it was cool for a girl (and for that manner, a boy) to have a 'natural' look, with long stringy hair and simple clothes. So many young kids, especially the white kids, looked like the white kids in the original Bad News Bears. Then that era passed.
I'd even throw in one last bit of cultural speculation here. From the 80s to the present, there has been a tremendous growth of awareness in mainstream culture of homosexuality. Alternative sexualities have become more and more accepted and part of everyday culture. While I personally would call that progress, I also think it has had certain restricting effects on insecure young people. Gone are the days when young male pals might hold hands; even at a very young age today they become aware that such behavior might be perceived as "gay." In terms of fashion, the early 70s saw an initial celebration of androgyny, but by the 80s that gave way to a highly bifurcated fashion code for the two sexes. I have to think that a young female tomboy in the 80s, 90s, and 00s would be made aware that in someone's eyes she is advertising herself as a lesbian. As most young people are about conformity, that would frighten most young girls away from anything that makes them seem different.
And by the way, "Local Hero" is an excellent film!
Won't argue there-- it happens to be my favorite. share
That was a fascinating post. Sorry for taking so long to reply to it.
I suspect there is a great deal of truth to your theory that awareness of homosexuality had a great deal to do with shaping gender roles in the '80s and beyond. Effeminate boys and masculine girls were certainly the target of ridicule on the playground in the '60s and '70s, but "that's so gay" wasn't a part of the lexicon. (Actually, the epithets were a lot worse, though probably less common because the awareness wasn't as strong.)
Ironically, it was probably the era of disco music, which was initially popularized largely by gay men, that helped put an end to the gender roles of the more organic eras of the '60s and '70s. While it didn't put an end to androgyny, it resulted in hypermasculine and hyperfeminine (or maybe just hypersexual) fashions and appearances.
In the '70s, it was a common redneck response to say "Is that a woman or a man?" when confronted with a long-haired male or a short-haired female. I don't think that was as true in the '80s and beyond. Pop icons of AM radio such as David Bowie, Alice Cooper and Elton John were replaced by MTV stars such as Madonna, Pat Benatar and Michael Jackson (OK, scratch that last example). Probably the final nail in the coffin for the androgyny movement occurred when Daryl Hall cut his hair.
So yes, Jodie Foster looks like a boy here -- from 2009 standards, but not so much from 1974 standards. The more relevant issue is which era produced the better music and movies, and how much gender appearances really matter anyway. I'd say the '70s to the first one, and very little to the second.
"In the '70s, it was a common redneck response to say "Is that a woman or a man?" when confronted with a long-haired male or a short-haired female. I don't think that was as true in the '80s and beyond. Pop icons of AM radio such as David Bowie, Alice Cooper and Elton John were replaced by MTV stars such as Madonna, Pat Benatar and Michael Jackson (OK, scratch that last example). Probably the final nail in the coffin for the androgyny movement occurred when Daryl Hall cut his hair."--WarpedRecord
Also, I think by the 1980s androgyny had been largely replaced by full-blown tranvestism. Remember Boy George and Pete Burns from Dead Or Alive? Ironically, the most old-school androgyny that one could find in '80s pop culture was in the world of ultra-hetero heavy-metal rock!
Excellent point! Boy George and Pete Burns didn't combine the two sexes. They crossed over to the opposite one, or maybe they created a whole new one. Hair metal bands like Mötley Crüe and Poison explored that middle ground between male and female. Thankfully, we still had Rob Halford of Judas Priest to remind us of what real men looked like!
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