Casting the Token Hot Girl

A DISCUSSION OF FEMME FATALES AND BOMBSHELLS IN MODERN CINEMA By Olivia Peters, Arts Staff Writer Graphic by Jessica Tenenbaum

There’s a broad range of roles in movies that call for actresses — you’d think about 50% of all roles created. Females are skilled, powerful and diverse storytellers. So why does it feel like Hollywood writers keep writing the same woman with the same traits over and over again? Let’s talk about casting the token hot girl. The “hot girl” is a trope commonly found in action movies that doesn’t change much, no matter if the rest of the movie is a bit more groundbreaking. While the purpose of the token hot woman doesn’t change much from movie to movie, there are a few different ways that her personality comes across. A femme fatale is a beautiful woman who can seduce a man with her looks and manipulate him with her mind. She has intellectually stimulating banter with the main male lead, and usually helps to further the storyline in some way. On the other hand, a bombshell is a very attractive woman and usually one who is only around for her looks. The bombshell is easily interchangeable and her role is more about the idea of obtaining the perfect woman than actually about the woman herself.

So, for female actresses looking to make their big break in film, does it hurt their careers to accept a role that’s all about their body and less about their acting abilities? Does it put them in a box and not allow them to be seen as more?

Consider: every Bond girl ever. Though the actor playing James Bond remains the same across a series of movies, his damsel in distress only carries over in memory. For example, Eva Green played Vesper in “Casino Royale,” double-crossing Daniel Craig and ultimately dying for him. She motivates him and seems to influence his decisions for a time; however, she’s not the first in a long line of girls whose primary purpose is to support the leading man, and she’s certainly not the last. Despite her good looks, good acting, and promise as a character, she’s replaced by another romantic interest in the following film, “Quantum of Solace,” proving that she’s merely represents a wistful idea of womanhood.

Megan Fox, someone who is often typecast as the stereotypical hot girl, played Mikaela Banes for her acting debut in the first two Transformers movies. A supporting role to Shia LeBeouf, Megan is the love interest who happens to be good with cars. Although she seems important to the plot, we find out she’s easily replaceable in the eyes

of Hollywood when she’s cut in the third movie only to be followed by blonde bombshell Rosie Huntington. Megan’s career has never diverged from that first stereotypical hot girl, an issue she has spoken about in several interviews.

Scarlett Johanson was cast as the Black Widow in the Marvel Universe, appearing in all of the Avengers movies and many other plot lines. Despite being in seven Marvel films, Scarlett’s own movie has only just been slated for release this year.1 Her character is flirty and seductive but quickly turns deadly in handto-hand combat: the ultimate femme fatale. Have her enormous contributions to the Marvel universe and fan base been duly rewarded? Only time, and the box office sales from her upcoming movie, will let us know. One case of bombshell success is Margot Robbie. She first became a household name when she played a trophy wife in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” but this initial role didn’t limit her in her career. Quite the opposite, given that she has starred in numerous movies and has been nominated for several Oscars since. Consider her role as Harley Quinn in “Suicide Squad:” she was a bombshell who still had her own strong plot line. This plot line was so popular that she was given the lead in a spinoff, “Birds of Prey.” Although Robbie’s career has flourished since “Wolf of Wall Street,” her success may be constrained by the expectations Hollywood has from her as an attractive blonde woman to fulfill the trope that gave her her beginning. The list of women in film who don’t make it past roles relying on their sex appeal is longer than the list of success stories. Action movies follow a fairly predictable story arc involving violence, fighting, a suave male lead, and an uber hot love interest. The lack of deviation from this oldas-time plotline, and the lack of complex roles for women are limiting the quality of films produced in the action genre. Perhaps token hot girl roles are so prevalent because they’re needed to attract male audiences to the film industry. Being cast as a “bombshell” may be a right of passage, where actresses are expected to pay their dues in these demeaning roles in order to get to play a femme fatale, or even eventually their own leading roles. However, the concept of the interchangeable “bombshell” is outdated and holding action films back from reaching their full empowered potential.■