Davis: "I posit that we should kill off the dads also"

Academy-award winning actress, Geena Davis, speaks to American University
students in Bender Arena at American University on Oct. 18, 2014
(Photo Courtesy of John Burns).

Geena Davis, an academy-award winning actress spoke at American University on Oct. 18, 2014 as part of All-American Weekend. Davis, a renowned actress, philanthropist, and social activist discussed gender roles in the media and her efforts to remove bias. 

After acting in major movies such as “A League of Their Own” and “Thelma and Louise,” Geena Davis expressed a “profound interest in the way women and girls are portrayed in the media.” 

She hypothesized that there were “far fewer female characters than male characters.” And she was right. So, she founded a non-profit organization called the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media more than 20 years ago. Davis says that the results are astonishing, “women are seriously underrepresented across all sectors of society.” She also claims that if we are going to have true equality, “I posit that we should kill off the dads also,” joking about how in children’s movies the mother always dies. 

When asked about Geena Davis’ performance, Sheryl Burns, visiting her son at American University, said the speech was “funny” especially “when she said women come up to her and say they made the same trip as she did in Thelma and Louise.  She pondered a minute and said ‘really...you robbed a store, shot a guy and drove off a cliff!” Jenn Kerr had a different opinion of the speech. “Although she delighted the audience with a witty speech, her most recent endeavor to help change the limited roles for women is most interesting.” 

The funny and witty star of “Thelma and Louise” wanted to be an actress for a long time and her parents accepted that she wanted to major in acting, she said, “as if I mentioned a career where you could actually get a job later.” Her parents “would have been Amish if they had heard about it.”

While growing up, Davis was always tall, she even considered herself a “tall baby.” When she was asked to join the high school basketball team, they told her to “just stand there.” 

To a roaring applause, Geena Davis left the stage in Bender Arena having ignited the flame of action in the American University students.