It is hardly controversial to state that Ingmar Bergman is still almost exclusively defined as an art filmmaker and auteur in Sweden and, especially, beyond. This chapter focuses on some particular issues and areas that have largely fallen by the wayside within Bergman scholarship, in large part due to the historical, accumulative impact of auteurist approaches, and that arguably form the very antithesis of what is generally associated with Bergman – notably, popularity, fashion, superficiality. In this context, it is of no small interest that Bergman so skilfully, and well before the existence of professional public relations people and other spin doctors, was able to manipulate journalists at will, almost as a one-man show, literally directing them as if they were players on stage. If Bergman can be regarded as a celebrity, then gossip is a viable and necessary object of study.

Based on 30 semi-structured interviews, this chapter focuses on women film workers’ representation and work life experiences in the Swedish film industry – internationally hailed as the most equal film industry in the world – and on these women's various strategies to survive in an industry that, since the late 19th century, been male-dominated. With more than 20 years of ambitious gender equality work informing this industry, and with an insistence on ‘50/50 by 2020’, the number of women in ‘above-the line-positions’ (i.e. directors, script writers and producers) has increased steadily over the years. Yet, women are met with several obstacles that are directly tied to their gender and although one is close to 50/50, women continue to be considered an exception, or even abnormality, in the industry. Here, Joan Acker's notion of ‘ideal worker’ (Acker 1990, 1998, 2006) is useful in that it highlights how the male norm still dictates the industry.

Feminism and fashion are intimately connected in a myriad of ways: through their ethics and aesthetics (or their lack thereof); their urge to affect the status quo; their preformativity; and their “obsession” with gender. They also share a mutual history, with women's demands for economic, social, and political equality emerging alongside fashion becoming “democratized.” This chapter offers first a historical account of the relationship between the two, starting with a discussion of the critique of fashion which was articulated by the suffragette movement and how, at the same time, fashion came to play an important role for creating acceptance of that same movement. The chapter then discusses fashion's role for women's emancipation in the twentieth century, all while including a discussion of how fashion was critiqued by second and third wave feminists as embodied imprisonment and how fashion came to be “defended” by feminst fashion scholars at the end of that century. Finally, the chapter tries to offer an analysis of what fashion and feminism can “do for each other” at a point in time when the fashion industry is under severe pressure, and also, at a time when identity and feminist politics are being attacked from anti-democratic and extreme right-wing corners.

How issues of gender equality intertwine with age in the film industry is seldom addressed in studies focussing on film and gender equality behind the camera. It is symptomatic that when a recent gender equality report from the Swedish Film Institute (SFI, Vilka kvinnor? Jämställdhetsrapport 2019/20, https://www.filminstitutet.se/globalassets/_dokument/rapporter/vilka_kvinnor_jamstalldhetsrapport-2019-2020.pdf, 2020) set out to discuss age, the focus is on women actors “falling off the cliff” at the age of 40—as put by Gena Davies. This chapter presents a study based on qualitative interviews with women of various ages working behind the camera in the Swedish film industry. We discuss how these women speak about age and analyse their experiences using the concept of gendered ageism. A particular emphasis is put on two of Sweden’s most famous women directors, with major successes in the 1980s and 1990s—Suzanne Osten and Christina Olofson. This chapter also provides a more general discussion about how women of various ages reproduce a distinction between young and promising and mature and professional in their narration of how gendered age plays into their working conditions.