Ten things make a list. I like lists.

i liked Avengers. i liked Black Widow, but also i _loved_ that the commander of the base (trying not to spoil anything here...) was a woman. a competent, high-ranking woman shown at the job she is obviously good at....and that she's a woman is unremarkable and unremarked on, utterly normal.

and yay Blackout, i cant wait!! :)

tereshkova2001 and I each noticed that same thing (independent of each other, we talked about it afterwards and were all OMG ME TOO). We both liked Agent Hill, and yeah, very much liked that there was not a single OMG IT'S A WOMAN IN COMMAND, not even a throwaway line, she was just there, in command, doing her job.

I'm kind of saddened that this is remarkable, mind. But I still thought it was cool that they handled it that way in particular. I wish we could do this more; I wish we could not only have more female, POC, gay, trans, etc. characters, but also that we could handle them as if they belong there.

i agree with your second paragraph entirely - and in fact, i suspect things are actually getting worse now (i'm positive it's not just my rose-tinted brain that thinks kids/life is far more narrowly defined in terms of gender now than when i was young/er).

(edit: forgot to add, for context, that i'm in my 30s)

From what I've been seeing? I don't think you're wrong. Looking at old episodes of My Little Pony and Rainbow Bright and stuff (from the 80s) girls shows were kinda creepy at times. And, speaking of MLP, there were tons of MLP toys out in a wide array of colors. In the current line of brushable MLP toys? Two toys have no pink* anywhere (that I've found) and that's because they're bother characters from the show. Stores demanded that Hasbro make the main princess pony super pink because they didn't think it would sell otherwise and Hasbro demanded that she be a princess because they thought Queen wasn't feminine enough. There was even a line of male ponies in the 80s and they're just getting around to making one boy brushable this spring. ... Because girls won't buy toys of boys? And little boys who like stuff like that won't either? :/ (*Not that pink is bad, it's just bad that there are no other options)

Then there's the Lego debacle of last year and - like I mentioned below - the issue with no Black Widow toys available in a lot of places. I remember, quite distinctly, buying Deanna Troi and Beverly Crusher action figures as a kid (even though I didn't really like Beverly Crusher because all she did was medical stuff and that was blah to a child), all of the Princess Leia toys, and the Ellie Sadler action figure (from Jurassic Park). I had to forbid my brother from getting them too (so we didn't mix them up) but he would have. In fact, after I stopped buying Star Wars toys he got more Leias and other female figures. And I know I wasn't alone because I knew other girls with action figures. (And I sincerely doubt my brother was the only boy who would have bought female figures to complete the set)

But that stuff isn't even being distributed now (sometimes not even made) and that's distressing. I think it totally supports what you're saying about things being worse

(I'm almost 30 so we're sorta close in ages)

*nod*
i am not a toy collector so i cant comment on that, but in general the whole 'girls only like pink and fluffy' irritates me - not so much because of the feminity but because of the lack of imagination we're teaching our girl children.

(edit: please excuse the er.... 'concise' comment, brain not working atm)

agreed. why should they be the ones having all the fun?

I was happy about that as well, in part because Agent Hill translated to the big screen nicely - although I'd like to see her as director of SHIELD, just because I think she deserves better treatment in that role than she got in the comics. (It was a bad time all around, really...)