Wizard World: Women of Pop Culture with Holly Marie Combs and Charisma Carpenter

Over the course of the last few years, Hollywood has experienced the beginnings of a cultural shift in which the old adage “representation matters” has become increasingly urgent. At the Wizard World Comic Con in Chicago this weekend, actors Holly Marie Combs and Charisma Carpenter headlined a panel that attempted to explore what it is like “being a woman in the male dominated industry that is pop culture.”

A lot of the discussion focused on social media, which often enables and spreads negativity. As Holly Marie Combs noted, female actors often face more scrutiny for their appearance than male actors. “You have to shrug it off,” she insisted. “I began to look at myself objectively and not personally. 97% of the time of rejection with women it’s physically based.”

Charisma Carpenter lamented that women often internalize a lot of that scrutiny. “It’s the culture that we’re in. Any excuse to tear ourselves down, we do it.” How to combat it? “Trust your purpose and why you are here. I wouldn’t want to live in the head [of a negative person]. Be confident in you – and f*ck them.”

Carpenter also noted that, as an actor, she often gets harassed for expressing her political views on social media. While this is not necessarily unique to female actors, it is nonetheless an attempt to dehumanize her and reduce her to her job. “I’m silenced because I’m an actress – [but] I’m an American [too]. Why do they get to tell me I don’t have a voice? What I do for a living is an aspect of who I am.”

Combs and Carpenter also discussed the importance of growing up with supportive mentors and colleagues. Both women received their training as actors on sets. For Combs, working on the set of Picket Fences “trained me to be a nice person on set and a better, more real actor.” The confidence in themselves that they cultivated at a young age ultimately motivated them to “gravitate” towards strong, female roles.

While this was a fantastic opportunity to have a crucial conversation at a convention celebrating fandom – especially since comic book fandom itself has traditionally been a bastion of masculinity – neither the moderator nor several of the audience members who asked questions fully engaged with the panel’s necessary topic. Both Combs and Carpenter attempted to tie everything together, however, and made the important point that women need to have faith in themselves in order to change the culture of Hollywood.