Was watching the SAG Awards yesterday and noticed how they would never, ever say the word “actress”. Best Supporting Female Actor, or Best Female Actor.
Both men and women “act”, but is calling men “actors” and women “actresses” demeaning somehow? Nobody is saying actors are better than actresses - basically the word just distinguishes the gender difference, not talent or ability.
Plus, if everyone is an equal opportunity ACTOR, well then - stop giving awards based on gender and just give a besting ACTING award. Period.
I guess the crux of my question is:
Why is “female actor” better than saying “actress”?
The word “actress” is often taken to mean a woman whose job is mostly looking pretty on camera. “Actor” refers to a skilled performer who takes his/her craft seriously. Awards ceremonies (ostensibly) recognize the skill of the performers, so the word “actress” is not appropriate.
That said, male and female actors play sufficiently different sorts of roles that lumping them into the same category wouldn’t really work well.
It’s in enough current usage that it’s not as bad as say Doctoress would be. But my personal preference is to avoid gender distinctions when it has absolutely nothing to do with the activity. I tend to refer to all actors as actors.
“Actress” is just going out of fashion. There’s nothing specifically male about “actor.” The suffix seems a bit cute & belittling–look, a lady is pretending she can act!. “Poetess” and “sculptress” faded away long ago.
Keeping separate categories makes sense. The SAG awards were also divided by TV vs movies & comedy vs drama.
Bijou is right – it’s the feminists that are responsible. The term actually started going out of style in the late 70s. All of this PC stuff is just stupid, and there should be limits to it.
I remember in the late 70s seeing a kid’s drawing of Superman flying. There were two other characters on the ground, and one was saying to the other in a bubble, “There goes Superman!” Stupid feminist teacher crosses out “man” and over top of it writes “person” in an effort to put forth her feminist agenda.
I took the teacher to task (I was in Grade 8; the school had Grade K to 13 all under one roof), and told her that Superman was an actual character. When the kid said Superman, he meant Superman, no one else. And then I had to give her a whole rundown as to who was who in Metropolis. Dumb chick was clueless…
I’ve heard the fact that the original word ‘actor’ in Latin was gender-neutral put forward as an argument for avoiding actress.
Frankly, that’s not as good a reason as some have mentioned in this thread. I don’t have a problem with it, but I suspect that I’ve grown up with the distinction enough that I still expect an ‘actor’ to be male.
I don’t see any thing negative about the word actress. I’ve heard Sally Field, Meryl Streep etc. refer to themselves in that way. Actress simply means a person playing female roles.
Starlet - may not be appropriate. I think of sexy women like Lana Turner, Marilyn Monroe etc. Their careers depended more on their looks than talent.
If the thespian’s gender is irrelevant, then use gender-neutral language. That’s why we never use “doctress”, and why “stewardess” is going out of fashion. But if you’re giving out separate awards to the ladies and the gents, then gender is clearly not irrelevant, and you’re gaining nothing except syllables by using “male actor” and “female actor”.
It’s not a matter of gender distinction. It’s a matter of distinguishing genuinely skilled performers from eye candy. Megan Fox is an actress. Meryl Streep is an actor.
