The Hollywood Reporter is curious about the lack of female James Bond equivalents. They’ve discovered it’s because ladies are just there for sex, and pining:
Of course, many of Bond’s women didn’t help to expand that catalog. “You also have to look at the place of women in most of the Bond films … it’s pretty grim,” says Angyal. From the femme fatales who use sex to trick Bond, to the women used as playthings in villains’ games, to the one-off sexual playthings who hop in and out of his bed, to the pining secretarial standby Moneypenny, the ladies of the Bond series, are for the most part, accessories to Bond himself. Not the stations that inspire the next female super spy.
And moreover, they are certainly not just there for sex, because one of the main reasons to become a spy is to form long, meaningful, lasting relationships:
Part of the roadblock for spying ladies is the audience’s thirst for romance. Whereas Bond gets to “love” his Bond girls and leave them, female spies almost always have more sentimental love interests (in their past or present) when they’re running the show. These women rarely have one-off sexual encounters like Bond has had (though he does so less often in more recent films), lest they be painted as a femme fatale rather than a heroic figure. Oftentimes, a character’s proclivity for romance rather than pure sex is what separates her from the villainess. Even Homeland’s unostentatious spy Carrie Matheson finds herself in a deep romantic entanglement while on the trail. It’s practically unavoidable.
The thing is, this is dumb. That’s the problem with that logic, really. The logic is dumb.
First, it’s dumb because the kind of person who really wants to settle down and have a meaningful partnership is probably not the kind of person who’d be attracted to the notion of being a spy. Spies work alone. And they lie constantly. Don Draper is attracted to the idea of being a spy. June Cleaver is not. Romance is certainly avoidable if you are a trained spy. I mean, lust is not avoidable, I think if I were in potentially life threatening situations all the time, that could happen, but long term pining is avoidable.
But that’s not the main reason this is dumb. It’s dumb because women can have sex with men for their own pleasure. They can even be portrayed as doing so in popular culture. You need proof? Here is proof:
The microfilm is hidden somewhere on his person.
She was pretty popular.
