Recently I attended a branding and marketing workshop at SAG-AFTRA where a group of twenty strangers were tasked with qualifying each other via a sheet of adjectives exhumed from what I can only imagine was a casting office in 1991. Our facilitator was quick to insist these results would be paramount; I found our options, laced with misogyny and ethnocentrism, to be staggering. Letter I’ll be writing to the union aside, the feedback I got from the group was in many cases to be expected. Sure, I’m confident, mature, assertive, intelligent, outgoing. Sure, I could play a wife, mom, leader; a college professor, attorney, therapist, flight attendant. Other responses were proof positive that no, group think doesn’t always have the same conclusion: I look European/I look Midwestern. I look upscale/I look natural. To the three men who wrote in that I remind them of Uma Thurman, thank you, but I’m pretty sure you were just already thinking about Uma Thurman. To sum it all up in a sentence, I’d say I am a confident, intelligent wife and mom who can play a professor or therapist. I’m pretty sure the translation is I believably take care of men. 1991 casting adjective sheet, we need to get you back in class.
