Meryl Streep Really Laid Into Rotten Tomatoes For The Lack Of Women Critics

Meryl Streep has a bone to pick with Rotten Tomatoes. The Suffragette star recently called out the movie review site for having a deplorable lack of female critics. “There are 168 women," she told The Daily Beast, adding that she went through the site and counted. "And I thought that’s absolutely fantastic, and if there were 168 men it would be balanced." Guess what? There weren't. "If there were 268 men it would be unfair but I would be used to it, if there were 360, if there were 4 … actually there are 760 men who weigh in on the Tomatometer.” That means — if Streep's checks out — roughly 20% of Rotten Tomato critics are female, a fact that has the potential to skew the reviews and overall ratings of female-driven productions. “I submit to you that men and women are not the same, they like different things," the award-winning actress told The Daily Beast. "Sometimes they like the same thing but sometimes their tastes diverge. If the Tomatometer is slighted so completely to one set of tastes that drives box office in the United States, absolutely.” Streep's critiques of the website’s system arrive at a particularly apropos moment. Suffragette, the film in which she stars as Emmeline Pankhurst, an English women's rights activist who fought tooth and nail for equal voting rights and representation, is being released in select theaters later this month. Currently, the movie, which is already receiving a fair amount of Oscar buzz, has a Tomatometer rating of 71 percent. Perhaps if more women's voices were represented in the critic community, that number could be significantly higher. Want to hear Meryl for yourself? Fast-forward to the 34 minute mark.