11 Stupid Pop Culture Tropes You Always See About Women

Anything can happen in a fictional world. Stories take us to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, or the fantasy-est realms ever conceived, or the grittiest most realistic representations of everyday life. But if all that is true, why do writers and creators lean on the same tropes over and over again? And why are the weakest tropes in a piece of fiction often strange takes on women's bodies, minds, and lives?

On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt sits down with comedy writer Hallie Cantor and comedian/actor/writer Tiff Stevenson for a look at fascinatingly dumb pop culture tropes about women. From movies to TV shows to video games, they'll reveal common entertainment myths from "water breaks like a flood" to "women are the hardest thing to draw" to "your number of boobs indicates your morality." They'll also run through real-life casting calls with bizarre expectations about who exists in the world, look at how pop cultural sexism and real global sexism feed into each other, and mull how Listeners Like You can push all this in a better direction.

Footnotes:

Hallie Cantor's website

Tiff Stevenson's website

Dollface (Hulu)

GameFace (Hulu)

ticket page for Tiff Stevenson performing 'Mother' January 10th 2020 at Union Hall, Brooklyn NY

Hallie Cantor's pieces for The New Yorker

AvalonUK article about @ProResting and Tiff Stevenson's live show "Casting Call Woe"

5 Weirdly Sexist Sci-fi/Fantasy Tropes That Just Won't Die (Cracked)

5 Stupid Movie Tropes You Always See About Women (Cracked)

5 Weird Ways You Didn't Realize TV Is Sexist (Cracked)

5 Dumb Myths About Women's Bodies We Learned From Movies (Cracked)

'Total Recall' remake: Three-breasted woman! (Entertainment Weekly)

Yarna d'al' Gargan (Wookieepedia)

NSFW Reddit thread: "I am the guy with two penises. AMA."

Watchmen's Doctor Manhattan dildo is as important as it is large (Vox)

Emilia Clarke Wants More Male Nudity on 'Game of Thrones': 'Free the Penis' (Us Weekly)

Appeals court flushes FCC fine for NYPD Blue butt shot (Ars Technica)

Green Lantern Vol 3 Issue #54 (DC Comics Fandom Wikia)

George Clooney's character Matt Kowalski (Gravity Wikia)

It Turns Out That Scarlett Johansson Replaced Samantha Morton In Spike Jonze's 'Her' (IndieWire)

Brendan Fraser Says HFPA Ex-President Sexually Assaulted Him (Variety)

Urban Dictionary entry for "himbo"

"Heavage" (The New York Times "Schott's Blog")

Pop Culture Detective: "Born Sexy Yesterday" (YouTube)

The Bechdel Cast (HowStuffWorks)

So, How Is the De-Aging in The Irishman? Incredibly Impressive. (Vulture)

Improvement toward inclusion in film, but more work to be done (USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism)

Do Animated Female Characters Need to Be 'Pretty'? (Time)

Adding female characters to new 'Assassin's Creed' would 'double the work,' says Ubisoft (The Verge)

Animating women should take 'days,' says Assassin's Creed 3 animation director (Polygon)

E3 2018: Assassin's Creed Odyssey Allows You To Play As A Man Or Woman (Gamespot)

Water breaking: Understand this sign of labor (Mayo Clinic)

Stages of labor and birth: Baby, it's time! (Mayo Clinic)

So How Many Thrusts Get You an NC-17 Rating? (The Hollywood Reporter)

Evan Rachel Wood Slams MPAA Over Deleted Sex Scene (Variety)

Cern cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia (BBC News)

Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines (Science)

Stereotypes about "Brilliance" Affect Girls' Interests as Early as Age 6, New Study Finds (NYU)

The Confidence Gap: evidence shows that women are less self-assured than men-and that to succeed, confidence matters as much as competence (The Atlantic)

'Game of Thrones' Creators Just Confessed to Being Inexperienced, and Fans Have Lots to Say (popculture.tv)

'Star Wars' Setback: 'Game Of Thrones' Duo David Benioff & D.B. Weiss Exit Trilogy (Deadline)

Anna Gunn New York Times editorial about reaction to Skyler White

The real reason everyone hates Carrie Bradshaw (The Daily Dot)

How California's Worst Oil Spill Turned Beaches Black And The Nation Green (NPR)

Take A Deep Breath And Read About How Bad LA Smog Really Is (LAist)