The one flaw in that theory? All the hobbits would spend too much time waxing their feet to ever finish an adventure.
Clever. I like it. My family has definitely noticed that the main character is much more likely to be a guy. Some of the more recent tween action series have changed this -- The Hunger Games and Divergent as examples -- but the books we read with our son which are aimed younger are pretty much male dominated. Some are for historical reasons (like The Hobbit, or the Jungle Book, where it would not have been expected for a girl to do exciting things in those times), but there's no reason why Harry Potter couldn't have been a chick. Some of the more recent Disney movies have been less helpless-princess oriented, and more, um, useful-princess oriented. In Tangled, for example, Rapunzel is not totally useless, but her magical power is healing instead of kicking ass (of course), and at the end she turns out to be the lost princess (of course). I haven't seen Frozen but the princesses in that one seem to be less princess-y than the old Disney style.
I also think this is why Twilight was a hit as well. What I'd really like to see is a group of youth books with teen versions of characters like Lisbeth Salandar (Girl With The Dragon Tattoo). This kind of puts Jodi Picoult in that category, though she is not as aggressive, and in some cases, as assertive, as the afore mentioned heroines. Harry Potter was a one-off series, and I don't think it is fair to single out one like that. Teen boys still do need to be heroes. But the genre does have several female heroines. Had a student who liked fantasy and looked for books that had strong female characters/leads. Agreed as to the improvement. But they still need to look at Fiona and Jesse (Toy Story 2/3) for examples.
There is this new political cartoon & the weird part about it is that it seems to a be based on a college campus during the Vietnam War.