_We’ve all grown a little too familiar with “Anonymous, Supportive Wife in a Cashmere Turtleneck,” “Uptight Careerist Who Needs to Get Laid” and other generic female movie characters. Let’s consider some alternatives._ ​
**_A Pretty OK Guy_**
“A musician begins to get recognition after a beautiful journalist covers one of his shows. Despite this, he decides to leave the band and care for his two young children when it becomes clear that his brilliant but short-tempered wife’s career as a neurosurgeon has made it impossible for her to serve as their primary caretaker. He doesn’t resent this shift in roles at all, and he never speaks to or interacts with the journalist again. The journalist does not try to contact him either; in fact, she finds him slightly off-putting.”Â
**_The (Incidentally) Sapphic Seaside Haunting_**
“An attractive 60-something lesbian couple buy a bed-and-breakfast in Maine. They enjoy a satisfying sex life that is never explicitly depicted on camera, and neither of them sleeps with the male handyman that they hire. As they prepare the inn for opening day, they discover that it’s haunted by the murdered child of the previous owners and are taken on a horrifying supernatural journey. The fact that they are lesbians is evident throughout the film, but doesn’t drive the plot in any way.”Â
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Charlotte Fassler
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**_No Thanks, Mike_**
“A single woman has a high-powered job that’s both fulfilling and demanding. When a fun-loving, irreverent male coworker tries to flirt with her, she politely declines and he leaves her alone. They go on to be supportive coworkers with healthy boundaries. She never marries, but, beginning in her early 50s, she has a totally satisfying long-term love affair with a widower she meets in Gristedes.”
**_Thank God for Whatshisname_**
“A brilliant scientist accidentally uncovers a disastrous trade secret while working late one night at a bioengineering company. When she blows the whistle, she’s terminated and involuntarily committed to a psychiatric institution. She ultimately prevails in her struggle to be heard when an award-winning journalist breaks the story. Through it all, she’s supported by a kindhearted, handsome husband, about whom we learn virtually nothing other than that he looks great in a cashmere turtleneck.”
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Charlotte Fassler
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**_It’s a Shame About Aunt Norma_**
“Two beautiful sisters live with, and care for, an elderly great aunt in their family’s ancestral mansion in the American South. She never gives them heirlooms or tells them romantic stories about dances she attended during World War II. Instead, she spends most of her time posting Donald Trump propaganda on Facebook. She’s a real bitch and pretty racist, too. When she dies, they donate her money to the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
**_Christina Clocks In_**
“A young woman chooses to work as a prostitute because she has a comfortable relationship with her body and needs money to pay her rent, as we all do. She has unexceptional sex with various people, then goes home and eats Trader Joe’s frozen lasagna while watching Jimmy Kimmel. She dies peacefully 70 years later while lying in bed in a nursing home, surrounded by her grandchildren.”
_Kira Garcia is a writer living in Brooklyn._
