A Quote by Jennifer Yuh Nelson

I don't think about the gender thing very much. But when I speak at schools, I've had female students say to me afterwards, "I never envisioned myself being a director, since I've never seen women do it." But after seeing me, they can picture themselves directing, so maybe we'll see more female directors.
I don't really consider myself a female director, and I don't want to do so for other women. Female directors are just directors.
I think female-female relationships interest me so much more because they're so encoded. There is kind of a psychic element that happens within groups of women. Whenever I hang out with my female friends, I feel like context is never needed.
I've had countless jihadis shut me down straightaway and say, "I'm not allowed to speak to any woman who is not my relative." But among the few I'm able to get through to, I think that being female makes me more approachable, soft, all the stereotypes of what female means.
A lot of people started asking me about this woman director thing, which I never thought about before. And I'd never really thought about how there aren't really many female directors. I knew it, but I'd never really sat down and thought about the implications of that, and what it meant for a woman to make a movie, and how it's viewed differently when a woman makes a movie about women.
Look what I know about directing; is it goes beyond gender. You might see some qualities that are inherently female in the great male directors.
It never occurred to me to be a film director, partly because I hadn't seen a single film by a female director, but I liked the idea of being a writer moving to Hollywood and being unhappy; that sounded romantic and fabulous to me.
I feel that the thing about film and particularly about TV, actually, is it's being created now. We're living in the best time so far because there are many more women writing and women directing, women producing, and people are finally catching on to the fact that women want to go and buy tickets to see female characters and more than one in a film. So I actually think it's a very fertile time to be a woman over 40.
We need more female directors, we also need men to step up and identify with female characters and stories about women. We don't want to create a ghetto where women have to do movies about women. To assume stories about women need to be told by a woman isn't necessarily true, just as stories about men don't need a male director.
I've never really found it that important to focus too much on the fact that I'm a female. I feel like if you make a thing of it then it becomes a "thing." For me personally, gender has always been one of the last things on my mind and I would much rather let the music do the talking. It was definitely surprising at the start to see how many people often got shocked that I would do the entire part of the composition/production/mixdown process on my own, but I don't think women are pigeonholed as much these days.
I never envisioned myself playing for the U.S. Olympic team -- growing up, I never envisioned playing in the NBA, to be real with you. I never envisioned that type of stuff. So this is like a dream that I never had come true. It's like I'm a part of what's really going on. It's still very hard for me to believe that I am really going to be a part of the biggest thing in the whole entire world.
Looking back, the most challenging thing for me was actually directing. It's very tough. Being in front of the camera is easy since the director can tell me what to do. But being the director and giving people directions is the toughest thing for me.
I want to support other women because of the opportunities I've had - and I've had a lot of opportunities. What I try as a female director is to do the best job I can and, in the meantime, bring attention to as many other female directors and writers as I can.
I never let my gender define me but in my whole driving career I only ever did one interview not being asked about being a female.
If a man can coach a female, why can't a female coach a male? When I was looking for a coach, the gender of the coach never occurred to me. It was about who I thought was good and who I could get along with and listen to.
As an artist, I never wanted to be fettered by gender nor recognized or defined as a female poet, musician or singer. They don't do that with men - nobody says Picasso, the male artist. Curators call me up and say, "We want your work to be in a show about women artists," and I'm like, why? For Christ's sake, do we have to attach a gender onto everything?
I've always been slightly hesitant about generalizing movies made by men and women being different in their nature; I think movies by each director are different. Having said that, I think that it's kind of disgraceful that there aren't more female directors.
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