The Questions Women are Asked....

True story: I liked The Avengers. I liked Scarlett Johannson's Black Widow, though I give most of the credit for making that movie work to Joss Whedon, who wrote and directed it (and made sure the female characters were more than window dressing).

But Hollywood is still its usual self, and so Johannson gets questions like these, while the character-focused questions are left to the men:

Reporter: I have a question to Robert and to Scarlett. Firstly to Robert, throughout Iron Man 1 and 2, Tony Stark started off as a very egotistical character but learns how to fight as a team. And so how did you approach this role, bearing in mind that kind of maturity as a human being when it comes to the Tony Stark character, and did you learn anything throughout the three movies that you made?

And to Scarlett, to get into shape for Black Widow did you have anything special to do in terms of the diet, like did you have to eat any specific food, or that sort of thing?

Scarlett: How come you get the really interesting existential question, and I get the like, “rabbit food” question?

Now she knows how to ask a good question.

Reporters, please try to come up with better questions to ask women. They do more than diet and look pretty, and may have something interesting to say. Okay?

My eyes glaze over every time some celebrity starts talking about their beauty regimen. Why not ask Johannson what it was like to be the sole female Avenger? Why not ask her how she and Whedon chose to portray the Black Widow, and how she tried to balance the character's surface vulnerability (especially during "interrogations"!) with her obvious toughness? Those are the questions I want to know the answers to, believe it or not.

Via A London Salmagundi.