Girls Night out is a 2D animated short film, directed by Joanna Quinn.
In the film, we are introduced to the anti-heroine character Beryl, who is a quiet middle-aged housewife, who goes on an all-girls night out in the pub to see a male stripper.
Despite the humour of the characters, this is not the only topic that this film is exploring. Quinn has designed these characters, such as the main character, Beryl, to show a realistic outlook of women in female society.
The design of Beryl in 1987 was quite cartoony; she had blonde hair, a curvy body with big glasses and a pearl necklace. Then in 1991, character design went into a more realistic look, still keeping the main features, only with bigger lenses. You can see this dramatic change in Quinn’s other two short films, Body Beautiful 1991 and Dreams and Desires: Family Ties 2006. The latter is a perfect example of representing a middle-class woman in the 90s. At that time in film and television, women were mainly drawn with a skinny finger, big bums and breasts to show this was the perfect representation of women from the male perspective.
The character Beryl stood out from other women characters in the film. They were middle-class women who were presented as slim with big breasts. Whereas Beryl’s character was working class, and that was her crucial ingredient. Drawing women as caricatures show the shocking reaction and reality of a group of middle-aged women going crazy over man’s private parts. By designing Beryl this way, Quinn gives a positive representation of women who are a plus size.
In Body Beautiful 1991, she gets harassed with her aerobics instructor, and she is even with him in a contest. This is shown with squash and stretch animation, and it implies that women should be proud and happy no matter what size they are. I think this is one of the reasons why the character is not shown as an offence to big women.
The character is not based on one particular person, but it is made up to portray a lot of women, such as a mother and an auntie. Therefore, she is described as a positive role model in the film.
The Animation Blog 