Tis the Season to Be Sexist

How Christmas movies are getting away with sexism and misogyny because it’s a Christmas tradition.

Tags: #Christmas #AChristmasPrince #AChristmasPrinceTheRoyalWedding #AChristmasPrinceTheRoyalBaby #ChristmasFilms #RedFlags #ProblematicMovieTropes #SexismAtChristmas #SexismSeason #Films

Disclaimer: our bingo board is not based on rigorous scientific evidence; like it’s things that are red flags and problematic generally speaking. There are other tropes you could replace the squares with too, so do not take it to be an exhaustive list and, remember, just because the movie you watch doesn't Bingo up, does not make it not problematic!

Christmas movies are a staple of the season. For some reason, they celebrate the birth of Jesus by encouraging young women to find love. They also promote family gatherings and joy, which could be good things, but are unrealistic for most. While the messages of love and joy are a good start, Christmas movies are often filled with problematic romantic tropes and misogynistic messages. To aid in recognizing these issues, we made our own Bingo Card. Sit down with your fave cuppa and play along. Tag us when you get bingo.

*Seasonal Sexism Bingo Card | by Daughters and Dead Press*

Just so you know how it works, here’s one example: we watched the Christmas Prince trilogy. Whoo, boy, did we find some questionable writing (let’s not blame the actors):

Ten Things I Hate About You

Do we love a good enemies-to-lover trope? Yes. But is it painfully overused particularly among Straight™ couples? Also yes. Was it surprising that A Christmas Prince low-key also started out as this trope? Not at all. At least the trope was resolved fairly quickly (aka within 15 minutes) compared to other movies. And then they lived happily ever after.

Honey, I’m Home (for Christmas)

For those that celebrate Christmas, it is marketed as a time to spend with family and friends. But for the career-oriented women of Christmas Movies, Christmas is a time to spend catching up to their more successful male counterparts, while ignoring family for years on end. Until we get to the opening scene, when finally, finally, the MFC will go home to assuage the guilt of the past few years, fall in love, and ultimately quit that job they worked so hard at to move to their childhood hometown and open a handmade ornament store. Interestingly enough, and bonus points to A Christmas Prince, it is actually the Main Male Lead that returns home to take over the family business.

Insta-Love

If you’re not going for the enemies-to-lovers trope (or the second chance trope, or the nerdy-childhood-friend-turned-hottie trope, etc) then you’ve got to have some *insta-love*. Have you ever just seen someone across a crowded holiday party, laughing in slow motion with someone, and you just know? No? Well, Amber and Richard, AND Simon and Melissa surely did. Were the Christmas Prince writers running out of tropes to use?

Hottie McExPants

What could possibly be more threatening to a relationship, based purely on physical attraction and lust, than the ex-partner? But not only have they snogged and held hands with your new soulmate, they are also unreasonably attractive. Wait, everyone here is above average on attractiveness levels. Because the holiday season, much like the summer and probably sweater weather and all those new relationships in spring, dictates that you get a makeover and only physically improve yourself. Finding out your soulmate cuts their toenails in bed and roots for The Other Team is an after-credits problem.

Children’s Charity

Don’t get us wrong, donating to those in need is admirable. If we all just gave a little to others, maybe the holiday season would actually be magical and special. (But also we should show kindness and understanding to everyone, all year round, not just when it’s cold and the TV tells us to). Still, nothing screams charity more than moving out of the Big City after quitting your paper manufacturing job and returning home to help your parents manage the evergreen tree farm, then finding out they have been up to their eyeballs in debt, while also managing new feelings for the town mayor who hates trees and has a vendetta against your older brother specifically. Or in this case, having the future king scheduled to give a speech about the looming recession, but instead, finding him hiding in the orphanage (foreshadowing!), baking Christmas cookies, and having a snowball fight, once again ignoring his duties to the country and its people.

The Best Friend’s OTP

The Peppy Best Friend Shippers in A Christmas Prince had one mission only: make sure to make as many comments about what a cute couple Amber and Richard would make so they would end up together. You know, because the best friends always know the main characters are meant to be together. In our opinion, it was also clearly a way to show that Cool Girl Amber has not just one but two (and only two?) fabulous and supporting friends. Side note, that Richard evidently has no friends at all (but one evil-turned-good cousin) wasn’t a big enough red flag for Amber to run?

Parent-trapping

The peppy best friend might be the hardest shipper but everyone knows nothing beats the matchmaking skills of young children. That’s why, in almost every movie, someone needs an offspring, a nibling, or your neighborhood street youths to get the main couple together by locking them in a room aboard a ship and throwing the keys overboard. In A Christmas Prince’s case it is princess Emily who ultimately get’s Amber and Richard together. Imagine if Emily would not have revealed Amber’s super-awesome blog about the random European royals to Richard. We may not have had the two sequels. What a shame, imagine that.

The Great Christmas Bake Off

Christmas surely isn’t Christmas without good, old-fashioned Christmas cookies so why not complete your basic holiday movie with a totally unique Holiday Baking sequence. The Christmas Prince did it too. In 2 out of 3 films. Impressive.

Have You Considered Talking to One Another?

Relationships are difficult. There needs to be balance between both parties' wants and needs. And, of course, there also needs to be a terrible misunderstanding, usually caused by Hottie Mc ExPants, where one side of the relationship is cast in a negative light and instead of trusting or raising concerns, the other side of the relationship runs away. Literally. Stealing a horse and riding off into the countryside for a cabin you’ve only been to once with no map or real understanding of the terrain. Amber endangering herself over angst is just a sexy game she plays with Richard.

Time To Sacrifice Your Career for ~Loooooove~

Christmas movies have a knack for bringing together two people from different parts of the world. So far away from one another in fact, that it only makes sense for the woman to give up everything she’s ever owned and her life in That Other City and move in with her new bae to help support his struggling Christmas Goose Farm. In A Christmas Prince, Amber was on a mission to get her big break as a reporter (we think; her job was very unclear); her dream career finally kicking off. Yet, somehow she ended up having to choose between having a career or marrying a prince. Naturally, the trope lends itself for women having to sacrifice their life for a man. Prince or not, surely this sounds like a scam.

Some Other Gray Areas (But Still Christmas-y)

There were also certain sequences that we debated including on the Bingo Card. However, eventually we decided not to count them this time. Here are our thought, anyways:

Technically, it did snow at Christmas, and before Christmas, and after Christmas, and apparently maybe all year round in Aldovia? Half of the planet enjoys Christmas during the summer. This whole White Christmas thing, we think for obvious reasons, warrants squinty eyes and several questions. For A Christmas Prince, though, there are so many other issues, the writers setting the movie in generic winter-y castle read as laziness and didn’t make the cut.

Have you ever seen real Christmas carolers? Do you and your family gather around the grand piano and sing ‘Hark The Herald Angels Sing’ after stuffing your face with turkey, ham, and potatoes? Is this a thing people do? Could we maybe skip the singing or just go all out and have a musical?

Many Christmas movies feature a female lead who has more chemistry with literally anyone but the male lead. Funnily enough, the Christmas Prince Trilogy managed to not have a single character have chemistry with anyone at all. Fair enough if you write a story where literally everyone is flat.

Just so we are on the same page: King Richard has no time to meet his soon-to-be-wife Amber at the airport when she arrives in Aldovia but he has time to lucratively decorate the entire bridal suite? Yeah, sounds about right for a Christmas movie. At least there wasn’t any mistletoe in this series.

General Problematic Tropes That Just Won’t Die

Apart from Christmas tropes, the Christmas Prince also knocked it out of the park with questionable to straight up problematic romance and relationships clichés. So here are three honorable mentions we noticed:

Every. Single. Character. Is. Painfully. Straight. Where’s the flavour? Where’s the spice? Why are you so homophobic, Christmas movie makers?

Everyone knows women are the weaker sex and more prone to panicking and injuring ourselves in almost any setting. Love isn’t true, unless your boyfriend or fiance is capable of catching you at the drop of a hat. Women need to be rescued constantly. It turns us on. (This is sarcasm, in case you couldn’t tell.)

First comes love. Then comes marriage. Then comes the baby in a baby carriage. Along with the disgustingly straight narrative of The Christmas Prince Trilogy comes that every woman wants these three things in her life, naturally. Because how on Earth could that not be a woman’s end goal? Do we support women’s rights to choose love, family, and a baby? Of course, but the indoctrination and romanticizing of this trope is, quite frankly, sexist and outdated. Have you considered writing a Christmas movie defying this trope? No? Ah, ok.

P.S. While We’re At It, More Irritating Thoughts on Christmas Princes

Here are a few miscellaneous observations we had while screening this trilogy.

As with any mysterious European monarchy rom-com, the first question is: “where is this country?” They use Euros, but from the map in the third installment of this series, the EU doesn’t seem to exist. Is this an AU where the monarchies never fell? If the US exists, and their révolution succeeded, why are the people of these countries putting up with these ridiculous people running their countries on whims and romantic gestures for their current fling?

Amber is truly a professional, writing her Very Important Notes down as she investigates the prince’s scandal because she ‘has to dig deeper’ whilst the economic collapse surely sounds ‘fishy’ to her. Is this what they teach in writing school these days? Did she even go to university for this? And why couldn’t their living situation issue be resolved by Amber moving to Aldovia and working for an Aldovian newspaper?

How come that all 50 villagers are always invited to everything and why are there only 50 villagers? Why does the village have an orphanage but it only has 50 villagers? Where did the orphans' parents/guardians go? The kingdom only has a castle, an orphanage, a bar, and a village/town square. Is the economy selling children???

Honest question: was this originally scripted as a soap opera? Amongst the slow zooms, the evil relatives, and the lack of depth to any character, it surely sounded like one to us. We are not advocating for more Christmas Princes, just to be clear. We don’t need 34 seasons of Amber and Richard.

Who on the writing team thought that the ongoing dungeon joke was funny? Like did a five year old write this? It wasn’t funny in movie one and it definitely turned into eye rolling in the final part. Stop it. Get some rest. On top of that, why did they continuously force a bow and arrow into Amber’s hand somehow despite her inevitably trying to kill someone with it. Surely someone would have thought to either give her some shooting lessons or put some kid-safety measure things around.

*We got Bingo twice for Netflix's Christmas Prince - we are not surprised | by Daughters and Dead Press*

Conclusion

Christmas movies are great and the overused tropes you find across the various films that exist now and will exist in the future truly can be considered a Christmas tradition in and of itself. Yes, of course they can be enjoyable, but maybe, just maybe, they could get a little bit more creative every once in a while. And for those who really wanna play some more bingo, don’t you fret; because we also made a non-Christmas bingo card with even more problematic tropes brought to you by Daughters and Dead Press. Have at it. Tag us and happy holidays.

sparkle BONUS CONTENT sparkle

You didn't think we would just make a Christmas themed Bingo featuring terrible and/or misogynistic stereotypes, did you? Don't you fret, because we also took it upon ourselves to create a Bingo card you can use for every movie. You know when you just want to see how problematic it is. Isn't that great? We think so too! Play along, tag us when you get Bingo, and enjoy!

*Daughters and Dead Press presents: Movie Night - Misogyny Edition | Bingo Card*

To prove it works, we also filled this one out for the Christmas Prince and, yes, of course we got Bingo (what a surprise)!