Women and Hollywood

Melissa Silverstein is the founder and editor of Women and Hollywood, one of the most respected sites for issues related to women and film as well as other areas of pop culture. Women and Hollywood educates, advocates, and agitates for gender parity across the entertainment industry.

She is also the co-founder and Artistic Director of The Athena Film Festival. The 4th annual festival will take place from February 6-9, 2014 at Barnard College in NYC.

Melissa recently published the first book from Women and Hollywood, In Her Voice: Women Directors Talk Directing, which is a compilation of over 40 interviews that have appeared on the site.

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Guest Post: Why Make Babies When You Can Just Make Documentaries?

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Being a woman, I was told since I was a teenager, “just wait, it’ll hit you – you’ll suddenly be overcome by the rash, ridiculous desire to have kids.” This was presented as a certainty. No matter how much you resist, you are destined to do your part to keep the species going. In my case I had decided sometime around high school that I wasn’t about to get sucked into all that “leaving a legacy” crap. And in spite of the fact that I knew that cleaning up green gooey diapers and going to all that trouble just to end up with some teenager screaming “I HATE YOU!!!” was definitely not worth it, I waited to be overwhelmed by nature’s pull. Through my twenties and thirties I waited for the “feeling,” all the while smoking and drinking and doing my part to ensure my eggs were well and cooked.