Women’s Roles In the BC Era

In old movies about prehistoric times (Conan the Barbarian, One Million Years B.C., etc.), the women were gorgeous and scantily clad, but at least they didn’t have to sit on the sidelines. Check out the trailer for 10,000 BC. Women figure in it for about .0001 seconds. And apparently the role of women in the movie is equally sucky — they don’t have much going on except for getting abducted and sold into slavery, and staying at home trying to stay warm. “In the classic prehistoric film, whether it is Quest for Fire or The Clan of the Cave Bear, the women don’t just stand around waiting to be rescued,” writes Joe Queenan. “They go out and strangle people or lop off their enemies’ heads or eviscerate sabertooth tigers. They do all this with brio and gusto. And they usually do it while wearing bikinis.” Heck yeah. [Guardian.co.uk and Amazon.com]