What I want the Amy Schumers of the world to know

Someone recently told me that there need to be more women like Amy Schumer.

I’m only vaguely familiar with her work, but I nodded because Schumer — like Amy Poehler, Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling — represent the modern-day triple-threat: attractive, intelligent and wildly funny. My kind of gal.

Last week, a friend asked me if I had seen the movie “Trainwreck.” She was curious to hear my thoughts about how the film, written by and starring Schumer, portrayed female journalists. I set out to see the movie days later.

Directed and produced by Judd Apatow, “Trainwreck” portrays Schumer as a writer named Amy who works at a men’s magazine. Amy is a bit of a disaster; she drinks, she does drugs, she sleeps around, she hurts people.

“I’m just a modern chick who does what she wants,” her narrated voice says at the beginning of the film.

Amy is a talented writer, but she has to do an interview for a story she has no interest in writing to impress her boss in order to get a promotion.

Instead, spoiler alert but I swear, you would have seen it coming anyway: she sleeps with her subject (“Aaron,” played by Bill Hader), falls in love with him, changes her sinner ways to impress him, performs an entire dance routine with the Knicks City Dancers to prove it, and the lovers live happily ever after.

Confusing. I’d heard Amy Schumer was a feminist. I’m not sure if she identifies as one or if that’s a label that’s been placed on her but — the “Prince Charming rescues her” plot aside —why would a woman working in a male-dominated industry create a character that perpetuates a stereotype that women in another male-dominated industry battle every day?

I was surprised but maybe I shouldn’t have been; it’s certainly not uncommon in television and film. It’s more difficult to think of a female journalist character in Hollywood that hasn’t had a relationship of some kind with her source or co-workers.

April O’Neil from "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" is the only one who comes to mind but then again, she was working with turtles. Their relationship wasn’t exactly professional either.

In January, Marin Cogan wrote a story for New York Magazine titled, “Why Can’t Hollywood Get Female Journalists Right?” This was on the heels of an article Elisabeth Donnelly wrote for Flavorwire titled, “Memo to Hollywood: Female Journalists Don’t Sleep with Their Subjects.”

Cogan writes, “While the practice of sleeping with our sources is not remotely universal or even widespread, what is ubiquitous is the expectation that women reporters behave like their movie-character counterparts, which can make reporting while female into a psychosexual ordeal.”

Is it not enough that according to Indiana University’s 2014 survey of working journalists, women reported earning 83 percent of what their male counterparts made? Combine this with the fact that according to Harvard’s Nieman Reports only 37.2 percent of journalists in 2013 were women.

And despite the fact that as a whole the news industry doesn’t rate as trustworthy these days, there is a code of ethics that journalists follow. It includes not having sex with sources. The female journalists I know succeed at what they do because they work hard.

And yes, sometimes a movie is just a movie. “Trainwreck” isn’t the one I wished Amy Schumer would have written and starred in.

So here’s what I want Schumer and the rest of the intelligent, and wildly funny women in Hollywood to know. The world is paying attention. I am paying attention.

I want to see women in Hollywood writing and starring in lead female roles that don’t make a joke out of my job. There’s been enough of that already, thanks.

Call Star reporter Leslie Bailey at (317) 444-6094 and follow her on Twitter @Lesalina, Facebook.com/Lesalina, and Instagram @Lesalina.