After more than 50 years, the first “Actress” got her chance to the be the titular Doctor Who in the famous series, but there is a major fan base faction who are extremely angry at this selection.
They want to maintain the traditional male dominance in the role of Doctor Who, these guys are venting out their frustrations by using hashtags like #NOTMYDOCTOR on their social media handles, and others are creating/signing to request petitions to the production team to remove Jodie Whittaker from the role of Doctor in Season 11.
Usually, media house are against male chauvinists, but some major tabloids like Dailymail and The Sun have been on the Darkside of this issue, they have published articles containing nude pictures of Jodie Whittaker from her previous roles. These sites have taken the low-road just to get clicks on their articles, and these articles are getting massive traffic. That’s another reason other websites are also adopting these pictures and video clips that show the new Doctor Who in compromised circumstances.
After seeing these controversial articles on Jodie Whittaker many fans are outraged, and they have signed petitions to take down these tabloid sites. In fact, many feminist sites have created separate elaborate articles reprimanded the acts of the tabloids. On the other hand, Jodie Whittaker, the actress who is selected to play the 13th Doctor in the series, has maintained her calm, and has passed this statement:-
“I want to tell the fans not to be scared by my gender. Because this is a really exciting time, and Doctor Who represents everything that’s exciting about change. The fans have lived through so many changes, and this is only a new, different one, not a fearful one.”
The Doctor Who community is admiring her stance on this issue, and in fact majority of the fans wanted a female doctor, they are immensely excited to see Jodie in the shoes of the main protagonist. But Jodie is not the first person who had to grapple with “Gender Bending” of the iconic characters. Leslie Jones, the standup comedian, had to face a similar situation when she was selected to play one of the main leads in the Ghostbusters remake.
This toxic community of close-minded people hadn’t even spared Daisy Ridley when it was announced that future episodes of Star Wars sequels would revolve around her story.
These people forget that the first producer of the initial Doctor Who season was a lady, and without Verity Lambert, this world wouldn’t even have this epic series. She is the one who brought in Indian-British director Waris Hussien to develop the pilot episode, which was so well received that Hussien was asked to direct many other episodes for the first season.
All these recurrent backlashes prove that this world needs many more Female leads in the pop-culture, to the extent that it becomes a second-nature for the audience, or else these entrenched gender attitudes will always haunt the female artists of this world.
