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By Maya Dusenbery • @mayadusenbery • 10 years ago

New Favorite Tumblr: Lady Parts highlights sexist casting calls

castingcallThe Lady Parts Tumblr features actual casting notices for female roles. At HelloGiggles, the actress behind the blog, Katrina P. Day, explained that after years of seeing sexist, stereotypical calls for auditions, she decided to highlight the worst of the worst as a “kind of community service” for all actresses. 

The genesis of the Tumblr was definitely a straw-breaking-the-beleaguered-actress’s-back situation. My frustration with these casting calls has been building for a couple of years—ever since I graduated from college and belly flopped into the industry. A few weeks ago, I came across a casting call that just read “Seeking: Beautiful girl (non-speaking).” That was the final straw. A perfect, five-word representation of everything I’d been struggling against as an early career actress and feminist.

While the notices are super depressing, Day is heartened by the response she’s gotten to the blog from folks within the industry and is “more confident than ever that there is not only room but demand for amazing representations of women in media.” Someday soon, she says, “I hope to see roles for women that are just as flawed, and complicated, and messy as the roles men get to play.” Word.

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St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

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