We were watching Ice Age with Sarah, earlier. It was pretty good -- reasonably entertaining, and except for a bit at the beginning where they kill off (surprise!) the human mother, not too distressing. But give me a break, would it have been so hard to make *one* of the main characters a girl? Were they afraid that being female is such a bizarre and otherworldly quality that it would have tainted or derailed the whole story? Because, I'll tell ya, in my experience you wake up, put your pants on, and go about your life for days at a time without having to sit down in the middle of the street, blinking and scratching your head at the weird and wonder-ful fact of being a Girl. I don't even collapse in hysterics much, these days -- "wait, I'm not a boy? How'm I supposed to leave the house?!" It's certainly nothing to get in the way of, say, taking a long walk in the snow to reunite some kid with his dad.

Now, I can absolutely enjoy movies that are intentionally about a group of guys -- Stand By Me, say, made perfect sense to be about a group of just boys -- because at that age girls really *are* bizarre and otherworldly creatures. Bringing one in would've changed the story. And I don't mind the tendency for individual lead characters to be men, not all that much -- I identify as much with Wolverine as with any female superhero -- the fact that he's a guy in no way makes me feel like I can't access my inner Logan (of course, I also had no trouble playing Prince Charming when we played fairy tales as kids). But in a movie like this, an ensemble movie in which there is *absolutely* no plot-based reason to make them all guys... I've gotta assume it was just because it never even *occurred* to them to make one of the animals a girl. Because girls only exist to interact with the main (male) characters, right? To be mother, girlfriend, temptress, prize... Heaven forbid she should just *exist*, just be living her own story, having her own adventure, not looking to be an accessory, not looking to be anything in relation to him at all...

Ugh.