Dallas Women’s Foundation Luncheon’s Geena Davis Proves To Be Savvy, Charming Proponent For Gender Equity In The Media

People lining up for a “grip and grin” with keynote speaker Geena Davis at the VIP reception for the 27th Annual Dallas Women’s Foundation Luncheon had an initial reaction — she’s so tall. Yup,

Geena is a 6-footer and towered over most of the guests. But once they had their turn to be “shot” with her, they walked away saying, “She’s so beautiful and nice.”

They were right on all three counts.  And after the lunch they also realized that she was smart. . . real smart. . .  like Mensa-membership smart. But on this occasion, it was not her beauty, award-winning acting or other accomplishments that were in the spotlight. No, on this day she was going to talk about a subject that had become a mission for her — gender equality in the media. But more about that later.

As guests made the transition from reception to sit-yourself-down lunch in the Hilton Anatole’s Chantilly Ballroom on Wednesday, November 7, snapshots of the crowd included:

• Speaker Underwriter Ashlee Kleinert sharing a shopping tip of getting stockings at Target. Hey, women in leadership roles still shop and wear stockings.  
• Jan Osborn and Robin Bagwell making a second photo stop with Geena
• State Sen. Florence Shapiro looking relieved that she was winding down her term in office.

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  Former Dallas Times Herald women’s section editor Vivian Castleberry receiving accolades from adoring fans for her work supporting women’s needs, rights and opportunities.

At noon the doors opened and just minutes later the raffle was held with the names of Gina Betts being drawn for the $1000 Carolina Herrera gift certificate, Jamie Baker for dinner for 10 in the Pappas Steakhouse wine room and Anne Leary for jewelry from Elan 23.

Nice! But the crowd of nearly 1,500 had gathered for more than a lunch of herbed panko crusted chicken pallards and natural pan sauce with squash and onion soufflé and sautéed haricot vert or raffle goodies. They had come to celebrate accomplished locals and to hear words of wisdom form Geena.

But first, DWF President/CEO Roslyn Dawson Thompson announced a challenge grant of $100,000 from the Kearney Foundation. Then she presented the awards of the day with Joy Mankoff being named the 2012 Power of the Purse Philanthropist Awardee and Philip Cubeta, the 2012 Power of the Purse Advisor Awardee. But instead of having the recipients come on stage for recognition, Roz just had them stand at their tables. For those in the back of the room, it was a bit of a stretch to see Joy and Philip, but timetables had to be kept.

At 12:53 U.S. Trust President Keith Bank introduced Geena and a video was shown leading off with “Girls Are Easy,” one of Geena’s earliest films. Then the “actor,” mom of three, Olympic athlete and Mensa member took over. Blending the perfect combination of humor, good common sense and an iron-clad backbone, she brilliantly conveyed the need for gender equality in the media without threatening the men in the room. Highlights of her talk included:

• At the age of three she announced that she wanted to act.
• When an acting teacher told her class that “only 1% of you will be able to make a living,” Geena looked around the room and thought, “Those poor kids.”
• Before appearing in her first film “Tootsie,” she was a Victoria Secret catalog model.
• When making “A League of Their Own,” “I didn’t know how to play baseball or any other sport.”
• Growing up she just “wanted to take up less [space].”
• She eventually tried a variety of sports — horseback riding, fencing, Tae Kwon Do, ice skating.
• It took until she was 36 to learn to like sports.
• At 41 she took up archery. Two years later she qualified for the Olympics.
• Geena was most affected by “Thelma and Louise:” “It changed the course of my life.” The movie had many false starts. Originally she met with director Ridley Scott to discuss the possibility of playing Louise. Instead Ridley asked if she had considered the role of Thelma, whereupon she then spent the rest of the meeting realizing that Thelma was the better choice.
• “Research has become important to gender depiction in the media.”  
• “The world view is very unbalanced.”
• 17% of crowd scenes included women: “Writers don’t think women gather.”
• Male-to-female ratio has been the same since 1946.
• Growing up she had such TV role models as “The Rifleman.” The female characters on TV were those in “Bewitched” and “I Dream of Jeannie,” in which the women were the centerpieces but were to sit “on your talents. With a grin, she added, “This happened in several of my marriages.”

Unlike other talks, this one never bored and there was a feeling that she was just one of the gang revealing the discoveries resulting from her years of research and evolving.

But all good things had to come to the end and so did this talk, but it earned a deserved SO. Before anyone knew it, she was hustled to the Wedgwood Room for a couple of interviews. Just like any gal who hadn’t been near a mirror in hours, she asked for a moment to refresh her look. Seems her hair was in need of a brief encounter with a curling iron. With a couple of quick rolls she was ready, only requesting that she sit on the right side of the table. Once all was in place she was asked:

• What is important for men to understand? — “What I found most interesting when I started all of this was before I had the data people would tell me they were sure they were addressing the gender disparity issue. ‘We care about it a lot. We’ve made such and such movie.’ And it would invariably be a movie with like one important female character. And I think the one important thing to realize is that we’re not aware . . . we don’t see it because if that’s you ever see you don’t notice something. . .  We need to be aware of is that there are things we just don’t notice that are going on. If you look through a gender lens at things, you’ll appreciate how much women have been left out.
• Why did things change from the days of the grand dames prior to 1946? — “I’m not sure exactly what happened. . . There was an era where women . . . in 1920, 57% of movies starred a woman as the lead character. So things have dramatically changed since then. I think it was sorta after World War II there was a whole shift toward ‘Don’t work in the factories anymore,’ ‘Don’t be strong ambitious women anymore,’ ‘Be June Cleaver’ and it was reflected in the movies.”

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  Does the arc of your own career sorta play into this? “Tootsie” was sort of a bimbo-type role for you. And, of course, then “Thelma and Louise” was totally empowering. — “Oh, yeah. Through my career and the roles I played have evolved a great deal in my thinking about women. To me it was nothing at that time. I was modeling. I went in the Victoria Secret catalog. Who cares? And it was fun to play a sorta dumb character. But it’s been through my experiences in Hollywood and having played some roles that resonated with women that really kinda educated me.”

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  Playing devil’s advocate, there are more women graduating from high school and college. Is this sorta yesterday’s battle? — “You know, not yet. You’re absolutely right. In many professions there are more women graduating from college than men. At entry level, we’re at parity. We’re pretty much equal at entry level in all the various professions. But at the very next level of promotion it starts to drop off a very steep pyramid, as each level of promotion happens. Women are not making it to the next level. So that’s what we need to work on I think. It’s getting women in leadership positions.”   
• Do you not do movies anymore? Do you just do TV? — “Oh, no. I do anything that comes along that’s good. But I keep myself busy with this while I wait for something good to come along. . . . This takes up most of my time.”
• Are you still doing archery? — “I haven’t for a while, not since my kids were born because it’s hard to find time to practice that much. You actually have to practice a few hours a day at least for the level I was doing.”
• What is it about archery that you like? — “You know, for ‘The Long Kiss Goodnight,’ we had a fantastic weapons trainer for pistol shooting and all that stuff. And he said, “You know, you have a natural ability with pistols and I think you could compete, if you wanted to.” And I was, “Wow, compete in something, but pistols? I can’t really practice at home.” So, then on TV I was watching the Atlanta Olympics and saw the archery and thought, “Gee, that’s kinda a weapon and it’s really dramatic and beautiful you know when they stand there. I wonder if I would also happen to be good at that?”

And just like everything else, she was good at that . . . very, very good.