Being on Set (round 2)

Conveniently K wrote her post about being on set, on a day when I was actually on set. While reading her account I almost had to wrestle myself to the ground to not share it with everyone there.

Being a female on a video shoot is beyond challenging. While on set there is such "man talk". You know what I mean: dirty jokes, harsh words, sudden accents that weren't there before, etc. As the only female most times, I tend to go along with it by not cracking jokes of my own, but just lightly rolling my eyes or smiling. I never point out that it bothers me, or that it's not professional. Honestly, half the time I don't even pay attention I'm too busy working. This has caused me to be considered almost androgynous. When a dirty joke is said, the response is "oh it's only T she doesn't care", or "right T?" and then laughs. I have decided I don't mind this role, the not really a guy, but not really a girl position.

But that day I was offended twice over. First, because when I asked why K needed to be on set they said "we needed someone to represent female engineers, so we wanted a blonde, good-looking female". Well, good one guys, I'm blonde. I jokingly said why not me, and the response was "well it's you, you know, we needed like a more womanly person".

So there you have it. Offense number one. Due to the card I play on set, I am not "womanly" enough to play the only female engineer in a two second spot.

Offense number two was obviously how they proceeded to turn the only female engineer into the random blonde babe. It just didn't make sense, and it completely objectified us females. They said it was just to be funny, but the client didn't find it entertaining, and K was off the hook in the final edit.

The day was a learning experience. It's real interesting to see how the way we play our cards can create some unwanted outcomes, but you win some you lose some. That day we both lost a bunch.