Recommendation of a dude who loves strong women (me)

Read this:



When It Comes to Movies, What Do Women Want?
by Monika Bartyzel

Excerpted:

...most films give us fantasy and cliched reality. Friendships only exist as ways to discuss romantic issues and have terrible emotional fights. Women only work in a small variety of fields and want a small slice of things from life. Trust is a false construct. The Bechdel Rule is crazy talk. ...you get the hint. The bits of a film that embrace reality only pull from a small section of the female experience.

It's so simple, but so powerful, especially when so many cliches and habits are wholly unnecessary and easy to give up: Leslie Mann's obsessive, irrational snooping in Knocked Up, Natalie Keener having a shrieky freak-out in public in Up in the Air, or Uhura stripping for Star Trek.
Simply taking out the obligatory strip or shower scene, the long freak outs, and desperate grabs for lust or laughs would leave time to follow the Bechdel Rule, and would make the characters all the more relatable, stronger, and engaging without losing anything in the stories. The same applies to rom-coms -- the more lazy cliches you take out, and fill with the littlest bit of humanity, will make a world of difference.