Deconstructing Woman

Last season, millions of women tuned in to watch Dr. Meredith Grey nearly die of an apparent suicide. As Meredith herself put it, she simply stopped “struggling.” Gave up the fight. Let go…

But what exactly is she supposed to be struggling against? After watching only one episode, it is made abundantly clear that Meredith is living the good life: she has a “dreamy” boyfriend who adores her, a support system of true friends who are ready and willing to provide her with anything she needs, and a blossoming career as a successful surgeon. The only glitch in her otherwise perfect life was a nasty, uncaring mother dying of Alzheimer’s. But it hardly seems likely that a sick, judgmental mother could cause an adult child to kill herself. And certainly not in light of the extended support system that is constantly available to Meredith.

And then there’s that inescapable feeling that Meredith and her unnamed neurosis seem disturbingly familiar: Another bright, successful career girl on the brink of realizing her dreams suddenly becomes completely dissatisfied with her very successful life.

In recent years, the big and small screens have been filled with many young career women falling victim to self-doubt, loneliness and misery. Tricked by society and feminists into believing that they will find happiness with a successful career, they uncover the “big lie” beneath society’s new rules for women. Expecting to find fulfillment, satisfaction and happiness through their work and passions, they are often left feeling the exact opposite: unfulfilled, dissatisfied, empty. Perhaps not surprisingly, their personal crises are usually overcome by giving up their dreams of living in the “man’s world” and returning to a more traditional feminine role. This return to the feminine not only brings a woman contentment, but usually provides the young heroine with what she truly longs for: love.

In Stranger Than Fiction (2006), frustrated and disenchanted Maggie Gyllenhall drops out of Harvard Law School to “change the world.” She believes that she is going to do so not by earning a degree, but by “baking cookies.” This choice is presented to the audience in all earnestness, as if baking cookies is a valuable contribution to the world. Of course, her new life choices lead her directly to her true love and her cookies end up sparing her from a jail sentence. Similarly, Toni Collette quits her successful career as a lawyer in In Her Shoes (2005) so that she can figure out what she wants to do with her life (this after seven years of post-secondary education mind you). To keep paying her bills she doesn’t work part-time or do legal consulting work. Instead, she starts walking the neighbourhood dogs. Rather conveniently, the dog-walking helps her lose weight and she quickly lands a man. And, in the end, it is through her relationships with her fiancé and sister, and not her career, that she ultimately finds happiness. 

In Kate & Leopold (2003), Kate McKay (Meg Ryan) seems unaware of her own unhappiness until dashing, chivalrous Leopold suddenly arrives from the past. After a few days of being treated like a “lady” she realizes that she longs to give up her entire life as she knows it to return to the way things used to be, circa 1876. Sweet, ambitious Gwyneth Paltrow overcomes adversity to realize her dream of becoming a stewardess in View From the Top (2003). But after she finds the success she’s always dreamed of, she inexplicably feels dissatisfied and unhappy. Now all she seems to do is think about the man she left behind in order to pursue her dreams. When her idol, played by Candice Bergen, validates her longing for “love” more than a “career,” she immediately flies back to her lover’s arms.

In the romantic comedy 13 Going on 30 (2004), Jenna Rink (Jennifer Garner) is given the chance to see what her life will be like in the future. She discovers, much to her delight, that she has become popular and is now working at her favourite magazine as one if its principal editors. But as a consequence of her unquenchable ambition, she has become a conniving, manipulative, back-stabbing bitch. She has lost her one true friend, Matty, and quickly attempts to reconnect with him. By the end of the film, and much like the heroine of View From the Top, Jenna realizes that when she abandoned the boy who loved her just so she could have a successful career, she lost the one pure and meaningful thing in her life. When she is given the chance to relive her life, she chooses the boy.

In other cases, it often takes the concern of a well-meaning loved one to remind a young woman that she is headed for disaster. In Because I Said So (2007), Diane Keaton seems desperate to find a husband for her daughter. It doesn’t seem to matter that her daughter is happy just as she is. Even film critic Richard Roeper was struck by the mother’s desperate need to marry off her daughter, remarking that many of the scenes played like a movie from another era. In Just Like Heaven (2005), poor Reese Witherspoon must endure a horrific accident and subsequent coma in order to come to her senses. Her friends and sister have all begged her to settle down and stop working so hard. But Reese seems genuinely happy. She loves her job, enjoys the company of friends and shares a close, loving relationship with her sister. She’s even received a promotion at work, suggesting that a long, successful career awaits her. When she fails to make time for a blind date, however, fate steps in and reduces her to a modern day Sleeping Beauty, where she awaits the kiss of her prince, literally.

In Hollywood, when leading ladies forget to make time for love and romance, they are almost certainly taken to task. But rather than subject these misguided women to any serious punishment, writers and directors generally give their female characters a second chance to reconnect with their forgotten “softer sides.” In Miss Congeniality (2001), the tough, unfeminine and sexless FBI Agent Gracie Hart (Sandra Bullock) is sent undercover at a beauty pageant. Initially, Gracie resists the complete body makeover she is meant to undergo. More comfortable in sparring matches with the “guys,” the feminine world of waxing, dyeing and dieting feels alien to her.  But after she sees the new, beautiful version of herself (not to mention the positive feedback she receives from the handsome team leader), it isn’t long before she begins to welcome the changes brought about from her newfound femininity. She joins in girls’ nights out and bonds with the women in the pageant. She gets drunk and silly, and gossips in the women’s washroom. In an attempt to strengthen her case to stay on at the pageant, she even uses this same silly, gossipy style of communication with her FBI team and superior. When they fail to take her seriously, she feels betrayed by her now too critical and analytical male colleagues. Unlike her male counterparts, however, the beauty contestants decide to award her the title of “Miss Congeniality.”  She accepts the award tearfully, thanking them for the many gifts they have given her. She returns to her role at the FBI a little softer, more feminine, and a whole lot happier. She also gets her man.

In Raising Helen (2003), Helen (Kate Hudson) is forced to give up her fabulous career in high fashion to care for her recently deceased sister’s children. As the title of the film implies, the movie argues that Helen—not the orphaned children—is the one who really needs to grow up. She finds true contentment and meaning in her life through mothering her nieces and nephew. Her life’s happiness is further cemented when she finds romance with the local minister. This romantic comedy is an updated version of the story originally told in Baby Boom (1988). It has more recently been told in the television series Zoe Busiek: Wild Card and the movie No Reservations (2007) starring Catharine Zeta Jones as a professional chef who must take care of her niece after her sister dies. All of these modern day fables serve to remind women of an important life lesson. Namely, that if we are not careful we are going to miss out on the most joyful, important and fulfilling experience in a woman’s life: motherhood.

Ally McBeal clogged the airwaves for years, eroding women’s progress with each and every episode. Supposedly a successful lawyer, Ally McBeal (Calista Flockhart) is unable to find any satisfaction in her career or her life in general. Diminutive and unapologetically feminine, Ally pines for love and romance, bemoans her ticking, biological clock and deals with depression by looking and feeling sexy.  More than most female characters, and despite her incessant complaining, Ally knows exactly what’s wrong with her life: she needs both a man and child to complete her.

Likewise for American writer, Francis May (Diane Lane) in Under the Tuscan Sun (2004). After her husband unceremoniously leaves her for another woman, Francis travels to Italy on the advice of her best friend. To say that she falls apart after her divorce is an understatement. Although we are informed that she is a successful writer, we see very little proof of it. In fact, she spends the entire movie making over a villa in Tuscany and trying to fall in love. In her own words, she wants, “someone to cook for…a wedding in the house…a family.”  Francis wants what all women are supposed to want: a home, husband and children. The reason she is so miserable is because she doesn’t have any of those things. With the purchase of her falling-down villa, however, her life slowly begins to change. She starts cooking delicious meals for the small band of misfits that work on her construction crew. Her best friend travels to Italy and gives birth to a beautiful, baby girl. And Francis champions a young couple’s right to be married and holds their wedding in her big, beautiful backyard.  Still, on the day of the wedding she seems a little lost, even sorrowful. When it is pointed out to her that she has received everything she wished for, she appears to experience a brief, momentary awareness of the riches in her life. We can only hope that she realizes the futility in trying to fulfill her every need with a husband. But we’ll never know. Before the end credits can roll, Francis’s desperate wish for a man is fulfilled as a handsome, young American writer appears at her side just in the nick of time.

This desperate need to be fulfilled by a man was taken to its extreme in the classic thriller, Fatal Attraction (1986). Who could forget sexy, single and successful Alex (Glenn Close) in her aggressive and often violent campaign to claim the handsome, married Michael Douglas as her very own? Nothing was considered overkill in her one-minded pursuit of happiness, whether it was slashing her own wrists, boiling a rabbit, or kidnapping an innocent child.

Lacking a husband and children herself, Alex seemed a pitiful thing. There is something frighteningly anxious and nervous about Alex. She seems to be playing at something for which she is very ill equipped. In fact, what we are supposed to believe is that she is playing at being independent when all she really wants—and needs—is a good man to love and a baby to fill her barren womb. Alex seems especially anxious when contrasted with Douglas’s wife, the beautiful, serene and deliriously happy Beth, played by Ann Archer. Beth seems content to do nothing but think about her home, husband and child. As Susan Faludi noted in her feminist review of the movie in her book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, in Beth, “…all traces of a career were excised and Beth transformed into the complete hearth angel…sipping tea, caressing piano keys and applying cosmetics with an almost spiritual ardor.”

The character Beth in Fatal Attraction is used, rather aptly, to demonstrate and symbolize the popular belief that homemaking and motherhood are the right and proper roles for women. In contrast, and as evidenced by Alex, the single, career girl is doomed to neuroses, even outright insanity or hysteria. At the end of the film, the general conclusion to be made is that too much independence for a woman ends up destroying her. It just isn’t natural.

The great social lesson that originated on screen in Fatal Attraction has been played out many times since, albeit more subtly.  Crazy, insatiable Alex may have turned into whiny, miserable Francis, but the poor, pathetic and miserable career girl remains. Popular belief seems to be that career women may be finding success but that there is always a high price exacted for that success. That’s not to say that finding a balance in life doesn’t pose its share of problems, for both men and women alike. And no one is suggesting that women should stop wanting to marry and have children. But when work and family are continually presented to women as two conflicting demands and that true happiness is only  found through love and family, we are creating a false and harmful duality in the minds of women.

We give plenty of lip service to the idea that women now have the right to “choose” the direction of their own lives. But if women have only two options from which to choose, and we are told time and time again that one of those choices will leave us empty, frustrated and alone (maybe even a little crazy), what kind of choice is that?

Copyright © 2007, C. C. Ley