Geena Davis Is On a Mission for Gender Equality in the Media

Don’t discount the power of a media image on a young girl’s life, says Academy Award-winning actor Geena Davis (Tootsie, Thelma & Louise, The Accidental Tourist, A League of Their Own), who was in Sarasota Monday giving two charming and humor-laden talks at the Ringling College Library Association Town Hall series about a serious subject: the damaging way that females in American television and film are overwhelmingly “sidelined, hypersexualized or simply not there.” Why does that matter? Elizabeth Gray, the Ringling College student who painted Davis’ portrait and presented it to her backstage before her morning talk, gave the perfect answer. She’d seen A League of Their Own as a young child, she told Davis, and because of it she’d always wanted to be a baseball catcher. But when she got old enough to join a team she was told she was too scrawny. “I said no, if Dottie Hinson (the role Davis played) can be a catcher, so can I.” And she went on to catch for school baseball teams for eight years. Read More…