Female Friendship – Page 4

The Queer Female Friendship of ‘Frances Ha’

For ‘Frances Ha’ is not a film where “boy-meets-girl,” and there is definitely no diamond ring. The love story of ‘Frances Ha’ is between the titular character, Frances (Greta Gerwig) and her best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner), and it is precisely this friendship between two women which questions, resists, and challenges the definition of love posed by the (primarily) heterosexual and (almost always) heteronormative romcom genre.

This guest post by Sarah Smyth appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

Frances Ha is a love story.

The film opens with a montage of the central couple play-fighting, dancing, reading, cooking, and doing laundry together, which establishes the seemingly blissful and idyllic domestic set-up between the two characters. As the narrative progresses, however, the couple become subject to the usual trials and tribulations of the characters in romantic comedies. Their relationship is complicated by external forces, which becomes intensified by jealousy and miscommunication, before the couple are finally reunited and reconciled.

However, despite the possibility of reducing Frances Ha to a set of generic conventions, to do so is not hugely productive. Firstly, this undermines the charm, intelligence, and self-awareness of the film. Secondly, by only examining Frances Ha in terms of how it upholds generic conventions, we remain unable to see the ways in which the film challenges this very generic set-up. For Frances Ha is not a film where “boy-meets-girl,” and there is definitely no diamond ring. The love story of Frances Ha is between the titular character, Frances (Greta Gerwig) and her best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner), and it is precisely this friendship between two women which questions, resists, and challenges the definition of love posed by the (primarily) heterosexual and (almost always) heteronormative romcom genre.

Frances Ha is a love story between two friends, Frances and Sophie.

Discussing the friendship between Frances and Sophie in an interview in Sight and Sound magazine, Greta Gerwig claims:

“We never started out saying we were going to make a love story between these two friends but it just emerged in the writing of the scenes. Then we went back and actually beat it out like a romcom: she has the girl, she loses the girl, she tries to make the girl jealous. It’s like a will-they-won’t-they tension to the story but you’re never quite sure what they will or won’t do.”

Co-writing the film with Noah Baumbach, who also directed Frances Ha and is Gerwig’s real-life partner, Gerwig’s comments make clear the intended underlying “romantic” trajectory and generic mapping of the film.

Although the friendship between Frances and Sophie sits within the structure of a conventional romantic narrative, Frances Ha never presents these two women as having an explicitly homosexual relationship. Frances and Sophie never engage in sexual activities with each other, nor share anything other than an asexual bed. Yet, within the heteronormative romcom genre and, indeed, wider Western society, which rigidly privileges the heterosexual, monogamous, and cis-gendered couple, the friendship between Frances and Sophie is figured as distinctly queer. In one moment, Frances even jokes to Sophie that, “we are like a lesbian couple that doesn’t have sex anymore.”

In “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Adrienne Rich writes, “if we consider the possibility…that all women exist on a lesbian continuum, we can see ourselves as moving in and out of this continuum, whether we identify as lesbian or not.” I move away from Rich’s use of the term “lesbian” in favour of the term “queer” as, in this context, the use of “lesbian” reinforces the binary construction of gender and sexuality which, in turn, undermines her proposition of a fluid sexuality. Nevertheless, Rich helpfully dispels the notion of heterosexuality as naturally or essentially given, broadening out the consideration of a fulfilling and satisfying love as going beyond the constraints imposed by rigid heterosexuality. In addition, Rich also demonstrates the way in which Western society’s continual re-iteration of “natural” heterosexuality only serves to reinforce patriarchal interests and perpetuate gender inequality: ‘”The enforcement of heterosexuality for women [is] a means of assuring male right of physical, economic, and emotional access.” In this way, through the centrality of the female friendship to the film’s love story, Frances Ha suggests the possibility of women breaking free from the oppressive constraints of heteronormativity and heterosexuality. By suggesting the possibility of finding love, commitment, satisfaction, and fulfilment from female friendship, Frances Ha not only breaks down a construction of sexuality, love, and relationships which privileges patriarchal power, dominance, and authority. It also proposes a future where there is an alternative, or at least coexistence with, the conventional heteronormative “female” script of marriage, children, and a house in the suburbs.

Frances and Sophie lying in bed together indicates their queer, but not homosexual, relationship.

Frances and Sophie are lying in bed together

However, before we proclaim to have arrived at a feminist utopia, and run off into the sunset with our best female friend, Frances Ha makes plain the difficulties and complications faced by these friendships. The film continually presents a dissonance between the Frances and Sophie’s fantasy of the future and the expectations of conventional heteronormativity. These expectations continually impose themselves on Frances and Sophie’s friendship, threatening to destroy this queer alternative of female fulfilment. Near the beginning of the film, as the two women sit in bed together, Frances asks Sophie to “tell me the story of us,” which, within cinema, is the kind of pillow talk that’s reserved for heterosexual couples. Frances says Sophie will be “this awesomely bitchy publishing mogul,” and Sophie says Frances will be “this famous modern dancer.” They will have lovers, no children, and honorary degrees – “so many honorary degrees.” Their fantasy subverts heteronormativity’s conventional trajectory of a woman’s life, with Frances and Sophie privileging economic independence, career and academic success, sexual satisfaction, and, most importantly, their friendship above husbands and children. However, Sophie is also in a conventional, heterosexual, monogamous relationship with Patch (Patrick Heusinger), which continually attempts to destroy Frances and Sophie’s queer friendship. In one poignant moment, Frances says to Sophie, “it’s just, if something funny happens on the way to the deli, you’ll only tell one person and that’ll be Patch, and I’ll never hear about it.” Frances’ anxieties make clear the realities of the heteronormative construction of relationships, which privileges the monogamous and heterosexual couple, causing Frances and Sophie’s relationship to wither in comparison.

Sophie most explicitly represents the conflict between alternative forms of female fulfilment through queer friendships and heteronormativity’s imposed expectations of success and satisfaction. In the end, she does not follow the fantasy that she shares with Frances. More concerned with the outward appearance of success than her own happiness, she gives up her job in a publishing house and, possibly, her financial independence, to move to Tokyo with Patch. Although she writes a travel blog in which, as Frances says, she “looks so happy,” she later reveals to Frances that she wants to leave Patch and Japan. In this confessional scene, Frances hopes to repair their relationship and renew their fantasy claiming, “maybe we’ll move back to New York at the same time and be like women who rediscover themselves after a divorce… We should get apartments close to each other in Brooklyn.” However, this idyllic moment is temporal, and the fantasy never becomes realised in the film as Sophie leaves the next morning to return to her boyfriend. Despite acknowledging her unhappiness, Sophie ends up marrying Patch at the end of the film. Frances Ha, it seems, is deeply pessimistic towards women finding fulfilment and satisfaction within their female friendships so long as heteronormativity continues as the dominant social order.

Sophie and Patch’s conventional romantic relationship poses a continual challenge to Frances and Sophie’s friendship.

Nevertheless, Frances Ha offers the possibility of women finding happiness and fulfilment both within their own terms and within their female friendships. Frances’ success at the end of the film is not in finding a man and getting married, but in choreographing her own show and finding her own place to live. In addition, the film suggests that the friendship between Frances and Sophie may not only continue to exist but to flourish. During a disastrous dinner party, in a moment of disarming honesty, Frances explains what she wants from a relationship:

“It’s that thing when you’re with someone and you love them and they know it, and they love you and you know it. But it’s a party, and you’re both talking to other people, and you’re laughing and shining, and you look across the room and catch each other’s eyes, but not because you’re possessive or it’s precisely sexual, but because that is your person in this life. And it’s funny and sad, but only because this life will end, and it’s this secret world that exists right there in public, unnoticed, that no one else knows about. It’s sort of like how they say that other dimensions exist all around us, but we don’t have the ability to perceive them. That’s what I want out of a relationship. Or just life, I guess. Love.”

In the final scene between Frances and Sophie, they look over to each other in a crowded room, catch each other’s eye and flash a goofy smile. In that moment, they both exist within their own alternative dimension. In that fleeting and temporal instant, they exist outside of the heteronormative construction of what constitutes a meaningful and satisfying relationship. In that look, they confirm to each other and to the audience that their relationship, so difficult, complex, challenging, powerful, passionate, and meaningful is one of support, fulfilment, and, ultimately love.

Greta Gerwig’s interview appears in the August 2013 issue of Sight and Sound.

Sarah Smyth recently finished a Master’s Degree in Critical Theory with an emphasis on gender and film at the University of Sussex, UK. Her dissertation examined the abject male body in cinema, particularly focusing on the spatiality of the anus (yes, really). She’s based now in London, UK and you can follow her on Twitter at @sarahsmyth91.

In Spite of Mean Girls: The Radical Vision of ‘Pretty Little Liars’

In her bestselling collection ‘Bad Feminist,’ Roxane Gay starts the listicle entitled “How to Be Friends with Another Woman” with this as the very first item: “Abandon the cultural myth that all female friendships must be bitchy, toxic, or competitive. This myth is like heels and purses—pretty but designed to SLOW women down.”

This guest post by Jessica Freeman-Slade appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

In her bestselling collection Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay starts the listicle entitled “How to Be Friends with Another Woman” with this as the very first item: “Abandon the cultural myth that all female friendships must be bitchy, toxic, or competitive. This myth is like heels and purses—pretty but designed to SLOW women down.”

Pretty Little Liars, a show on ABC Family that just wrapped its fifth season, looks on the surface to be all about the things that slow female friendships down, especially in high school—the fabulous heels, the purses, the toxicity of secret-keeping and back-stabbing. (For a long time I assumed it was Gossip Girl in suburbia, all about teenagers behaving badly and looking great while doing it.) Yet upon closer inspection, it presents itself as the most radical show about women, and specifically female friendship, on television, a treatise on what might happen when four friends refuse to become mean girls, and choose something to embark on something far more difficult: genuine support of each other. That might explain why the show is the most Tweeted-about series of all time (yes, surpassing Scandal, with 11.7 million Tweets sent during its season 2 finale in 2013), and why it’s proven to be much more than just a pretty teenage drama.

Based upon the YA series by Sara Shepard, PLL takes place in the fictional town of Rosewood, Pennsylvania, where queen bee Alison (Sasha Pieterse) has been missing for almost a year, and her formerly tight clique has broken up as they enter their junior year of high school. Star swimmer Emily (Shay Mitchell), who once nursed a deeply closeted crush on Alison, is just starting to assert her sexuality and independence. Straight-A student Spencer (Troian Bellisario) is tiptoeing around her uber-competitive sister Melissa (Torrey DeVitto). The fashionista Hanna (Ashley Benson) spends most of her time shoplifting and looking the other way while her single mother cleans up her messes. And artistic Aria (Lucy Hale) has just returned from a year abroad with her family, and immediately falls for Ezra (Ian Harding), a cute guy who—tada!—turns out to be her English teacher. These characters seem like archetypes (jock, Type-A, ditz, flower child) with very little beyond typical teenage drama to concern them. But then Alison’s dead body is discovered, and the girls start receiving texts from a mysterious “A” who seems to know all their unflattering secrets, lies, and desires, and worst, the details that could easily nail them for a terrible crime. But rather than turn away from each other, the girls immediately come back together, breaking those archetypes open and forming an alliance to uncover their texting tormentor and bring Alison’s killer to justice. As its millions of rabidly texting fans would attest, Pretty Little Liars has become the rare teen-oriented show that embraces all types of girls, the importance of supporting your friends and how they choose to be happy, and most importantly, how to fight against a bully who keeps you down.

Initially it seems that the villain is the mysterious “A,” whose threats scare the girls into silence or keep them at a distance from what makes them happy. (One of the gentler A threats is in Season 1, when A steals photographs of Emily kissing her new girlfriend and threatens to reveal them to her family.) But the real spectre of terror over the entire series is Alison: the glamorous, manipulative, power-hungry, and freakishly intelligent teenage girl who can bend anybody to her will.

In life, Alison bullied and teased her so-called friends and kept them from showing their own strengths. Hanna in particular withered under her rule, as Alison called her “Hefty Hanna” until she became bulimic. And even after death, the secrets that Alison had kept for the girls serve as A’s material for ripping their lives apart—to reveal Aria’s relationship with Ezra as well as her father’s (Chad Lowe) infidelity, to expose Spencer’s plagiarism of an award-winning essay, and to send Hanna’s mother to jail for stealing money as they’re on the verge of foreclosure. The villainy at the core of PLL is Alison’s undue influence, the one cool girl who rules over other girls and takes away their power.

But instead of becoming more like their tormentor, Pretty Little Liars gives its characters the choice of telling the truth, trusting each other, and taking on the consequences of their mistakes rather than lying their way out of them. Aria confronts her father about the infidelity, and Spencer withdraws her essay from the competition and disappoints her family in the process. Emily comes out of the closet, despite her fears—and her friends are genuinely happy and supportive of her. And to earn back the balance of her mother’s stolen money, on A’s orders Hanna consumes a dozen cupcakes, triggering a flashback to her days of binge eating. Yet when A texts her to do what Alison taught her, to “get rid of it,” Hanna refuses to go down the same old road. Instead of becoming more like Alison, the girls decide to become more like themselves, the selves that they know to be powerful and beautiful, inside and out.

Let’s revisit that #1 rule of female friendship from Roxane Gay—too often we ascribe a kind of inherent toxicity to female friendship, to the way women negotiate power dynamics and competition amongst themselves, as though there was a finite amount of beauty, intelligence, and influence in the room. The perpetuation of “girl-on-girl” crime doesn’t have as much to do with actual criminality or offense (when a cheating boyfriend is caught, why do we blame the other woman?), as it does with the notion that only one girl can win at any given moment. Yet in embracing the differences of the four Liars, the show allows a kind of multiplicity in its portraits of good girls who are not goodie two-shoes, and what winning in a community of women can look like. These girls kick butt together, and they do it with strengths drawn directly from their personalities, without the supernatural powers or exceptionally strong kickboxing or archery skills that we expect from other heroines of pop culture. For Emily, it’s her disarming honesty and candor that allows people to trust and open up to her.

Aria is small but fierce, and her wisdom beyond her years empowers her to make decisions that she can stand by.

Hanna is loyal to the core, and because she herself had been an outsider, she refuses to tolerate deceit from the people around her.

And for Spencer, in a constantly evolving and Emmy-worth performance by Bellisario, it’s her supreme intelligence and drive makes her the perfect troop leader, galvanizing her friends to stop settling for misery and start exposing the threats around them.

To be sure, the show has plenty of faults: the various relationship between teenage girls and some much-older love interests gives me plenty of heebie-jeebies, as do the increasingly improbable plot twists and the immaculate wardrobe, hair, and makeup choices on display at all times. (When, in all that mystery solving and running around in the woods, do they have enough time to pick out such cute outfits?) And, if you agree with A.O. Scott’s recent handwringing over the “death of adulthood” in contemporary media, you might wonder why so much of this positive friendship conversation has to be about teenagers rather than grown women. But these girls are exactly at the age where major decisions about character are made—when you move from childhood into adulthood, you stop absorbing information from your role models and start making your own choices. And the choice—to be a mean girl, and rule over everyone else, or to be a kind girl and to form meaningful relationships—is at the very center of Pretty Little Liars.

Most importantly, the stakes for these friendships are truly, massively high. These girls are literally saving each other FROM DEATH—breaking each other out of cages, chasing down bad guys, and fighting back against people who would like to silence them. While the plotting of the show may be highly tongue-in-cheek in treating death-defying an extracurricular activity, you have to admire how high the stakes have been placed. Without having each other’s backs, without their friendships, these girls would be dead—friendship is not only a positive choice, it is a lifesaving choice. And that is a pretty darn heroic proposition, especially for teenage girls.

Jessica Freeman-Slade is a cookbook editor at Random House, and has written reviews for The Rumpus, The Millions, The TK Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Specter Magazine, among others. She lives in Morningside Heights, NY.

‘Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion’: Bosom Buddies Against The World

While there’s quite a bit that’s frivolous about Romy and Michele – the film’s tagline is “The Blonde Leading the Blonde” – there is also, much more importantly, the heartwarming love story at the film’s creamy center. But this love has nothing to do with the complications and disappointments that romantic relationships can bring; rather, it’s what the Greeks called agape, or a deeply spiritual, passionate love between intimate friends.

This guest post by Emma Kat Richardson appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

“God, sometimes I wish I were a lesbian.”

“You wanna try having sex sometime, just to see if we are?”

Romy pauses to consider, then scoffs dismissively. “Yeah right Michele, just the thought of having sex with another woman creeps me out.” Then, an afterthought. “…but if we’re not married by the time we’re 30, ask me again.”

Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion was released theatrically in 1997. Presumably at the time, the titular characters – beloved besties, roomies, and even, rather shockingly, bunkies in twin beds – were around 27 or 28 years old. Which would, in 2014, make them both either 44 or 45. Have they done it yet? By this time, I’m even hoping for a marriage license.

Any ‘90s girl worth her weight in Polly Pockets is bound to be intimately familiar with this movie. My first encounter with the duo happened at a sleepover, in middle school. One trip to the video store and credit card swipe from a friend’s “cool mom” later (you know, the kind not deterred by a pesky R rating), and I was suddenly plunged neck deep into the world of gaudy pink boas and four letter words. Admittedly, much of the humor was over my young, inexperienced head – there’s a recurring joke about a male character schlepping around a giant notebook to conceal his erection whenever Michele is around, which I assumed was just a zing at a nerds and their wacky obsession with doing homework. But there was much to love in the brassy confidence, bold aesthetic choices, and chirpy self-empowerment in the two heroines, and it’s this aspect of RMHSR that makes it one of the most important female-driven comedies.

As high school compadres living together in a sizable beachfront Los Angeles apartment (paid for, somehow, by Romy’s cashier salary alone), Romy and Michele are played with aplomb by Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow, respectively. Through a chance encounter with a former classmate from Tuscon (Heather Mooney – a breakout role for the indomitable Janeane Garofalo) the pair finds out that their 10-year high school reunion is coming up, providing the perfect opportunity to stun adolescent tormenters with their adult impressiveness.

There’s just one problem: their lives aren’t terribly impressive. In fact, on paper, they’re kind of losers. Quite literally, on paper – filling out a pre-reunion questionnaire reveals some startling facts to the blissfully ignorant pair: both are in their late 20s, still single, and stuck in menial jobs. Or no job at all, in Michele’s case. Worse still, a clique of popular mean girls from their teen years, the A Group, is bound to show up at the reunion, along with Romy’s senior year crush, a good-looking meathead who agrees to dance with her at the prom, and then disappears with his wicked girlfriend, the alpha of the A Group. Naturally, there’s a bit of pressure to get appearances here just right. What’s the point of going if you’re not going to impress people, Romy moans.

The answer to this sticky situation, it turns out, is to fight sticky with sticky notes. Why not say they invented Post-Its? Roll into town with a “flip phone” in hand (oh, the ‘90s!), conservatively attired in homemade business suits….Everybody’s bound to believe this incredible fib, right? Wrong. This being a warm and friendly comedy, the nature consequence of grandiose foolery is the spectacular flameout.

"As usual, we’re the only ones who don’t look like we’re going to a hoedown." — “As usual, we’re the only ones who don’t look like we’re going to a hoedown.”

While there’s quite a bit that’s frivolous about Romy and Michele – the film’s tagline is “The Blonde Leading the Blonde” – there is also, much more importantly, the heartwarming love story at the film’s creamy center. But this love has nothing to do with the complications and disappointments that romantic relationships can bring; rather, it’s what the Greeks called agape, or a deeply spiritual, passionate love between intimate friends. Romy White and Michele Weinberger are heterosexual, and to some degree obsessed with their appearances. Who could forget the sensational mid-movie argument scene; yelling “I’M THE MARY, YOU’RE THE RHODA!” at a friend is still a thing to this day. And yet, it’s the friendship between Michele and Romy that transcends the bounds of what a typical female interaction on screen ought to be, by conventional standards.

Together, the two women draw strength from each other: they face down the members of the A Group in the film’s climactic scene, and in the process expose the cruel, manipulative version of “friendship” that so often plays out in movies. In confronting Christie Masters, a prototype of Mean Girls’ Regina George, Romy and Michele gain a sense of self-actualization by exposing her for the insecure, jealous, hateful person always found at the rotted core of an aggressive, abusive bully. Less-than-princely men are, too, an obstacle of no legitimate threat to the relationship maintained by the duo. As Romy tries and fails to secure reunion-ready boyfriends for them in some of the film’s establishing scenes, she repeatedly strikes out, or finds excuses not to follow through on leads. (“Would you excuse me?” she tells a man at a club, “I cut my foot before and my shoe is filling up with blood.”) One has to wonder if the women might not be intentionally single – after all, aren’t they really the loves of each other’s lives? Their sense of inter-personal connectivity is so ingrained that even a dance with a lover is impossible without the other. “May I have this dance?” Sandy Frink, the aforementioned notebook carrier, gingerly asks the grown up Michele at the reunion. “Only if Romy can dance with us,” is the answer, and it’s hard to imagine such a request being met with any other outcome.

Amid so much calculated superficiality among female friendships portrayed on screen, now, even more than 10 years later, it’s still wonderfully refreshing to watch a movie with such a strong girl-powered relationship at its central focus. Romy and Michele are themselves far from perfect, but that’s the whole point: perfection can never be a substitute for true happiness, itself a thing derived from real love in its most unadulterated sense. The lessons of Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion are pure and positive: the love between friends is a potent force against the evils of the world, and remaining faithful to one’s self is the derivative of uncomplicated happiness. Take a lesson, here, and whether you think you’re the Mary or the Rhoda, always do your best to have a Romy and Michele day.

Emma Kat Richardson is a Detroit-reared freelance writer living in Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared in Bitch, Laugh Spin Magazine, 944, Alternative Press, Real Detroit Weekly, and on Bust.com. Tweet her: @emmakat, and read her: emmakatrichardson.com.

We’re All for One, We’re One for All in ‘A League of Their Own’

At the end, many of the league’s players reunite to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Old friendships rekindle and emotions soar. After following these women through what must have been the best time they ever had in their youth it is refreshing to see authentic portrayals of them as older women. It feels like their lives are unfolding before my eyes.

This guest post by Rhianna Shaheen appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

I’ve seen quite a few female friendships on screen that I’ve liked, but I never get tired of A League of Their Own (1992). As an alumna of a women’s college, this film especially hits home, making me nostalgic for my Bryn Mawr days. Each time I watch it I become homesick for that place and that community where we were all young pioneers in our own way. I often project myself onto older Dottie, imagining myself old and grey at my class reunion in a similar fashion to the film’s ending sequence. Instant tears!

While narratives about groups or duos of female friends are common to the “chick flick” genre, large and diverse casts of women seem to be a rarity in film and TV unless it’s high school rivalries or incarcerated women. Not only does this provide us with a limited scope of representation but it also perpetuates harmful stereotypes that affect young women as well as a society that equates women’s leadership to being “bossy” or “pushy.”

The media’s portrayal of women and female friendships is too often characterized by catfights and “bitchiness” toward each other in the competition for a man. These harmful images of girls and women have become so pervasive to our culture that large communities of women are often viewed as detrimental to progress or success. Male friendships and communities are encouraged at a young age through sports teams and Boy Scouts, while communities of women are stigmatized by the patriarchy as “bitchy,” “too emotional,” or “too much drama.”

I myself was under a similar delusion before I applied to three of the Seven Sisters Colleges. Most people who tried to dissuade me either pointed to the lack of male students as being a deficit to my happiness or some other gross sexist, homophobic stereotype. A League of Their Own celebrates so much of what makes largely female communities special and the bond between the individuals so powerful.

A story told about the founding of women’s professional baseball could have taken many directions. I am thankful that it did not fall into any of those ugly stereotypes in order to propel the narrative. The women in this film have relationships with each other that are put first over any relationships they may or may not have with men. As a result, we have a film that provides us with three-dimensional portraits of women and the intricacies of their friendships during a time of transition in the 1940s.

Dottie takes charge when Coach Dugan proves useless

When the Rockford Peaches first come together for their first ever game as a team they look to their manager and former baseball star Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks). To their surprise he treats the whole thing as a joke citing, “I don’t have ballplayers, I’ve got girls. Girls are what you sleep with after the game, not, not what you coach during the game.” He comes into the locker room drunk and completely useless. Without a lineup for the game, Dottie Hinson (Geena Davis) steps up and quickly assumes the role of coach for a good majority of the film. Despite a drunken manager and the sexist heckles from the empty stadium, these women pull together a lineup and easily win their first game.

Mae (Madonna) gives Shirley (Ann Cusack) reading lessons

As these women spend more time together they learn to grow as ballplayers and sisters. Many of my favorite scenes are the brief vignettes that occur throughout the film that give us a deeper glimpse into their lives and character. Early in the film, Dottie and her younger sister Kit (Lori Petty) stand up for Marla Hooch (Megan Cavanagh) when talent scout Ernie Capadino (Jon Lovitz) rejects her as possible player due to her plain looks. Both sisters refuse to go with him unless he accepts Marla, who is as good of a player as any of them. On the bus, Mae teaches her teammate Shirley how to read by having her sound out the words from a smutty novel. When asked about her choice of literature Mae responses: “What difference does it make? She’s reading, okay? That’s the important thing.” In the same sequence, Doris (Rosie O’Donnell) opens up about her abusive boyfriend back home to the other women. She discusses the importance of this league and the support of her teammates in shaping her own self-esteem: “I mean, look. There’s a lot of us. I think we’re all all right.” While these players may clash at times there is none of the cattiness or “girl hate” concocted by the patriarchy.

The Peaches garner more publicity to save the league

The next problem becomes the fact that the women’s league isn’t bringing enough fans into the stadium or profit to the owners of the league. When there’s talk of closing them down these women band together and “give them everything [they’ve] got” to save the league. A photo of Dottie doing the splits while catching a ball behind home plate hits the cover of Life magazine and the crowds soon follow. Even “All the Way” Mae brainstorms ways to help their publicity drive: “What if at a key moment in the game my, my uniform bursts open and, uh, oops…my bosoms come flying out? That, that might draw a crowd, right?” While the league’s owner, Mr. Harvey (Garry Marshall), is not convinced of its worth until after Kit has been traded off to another team, there’s no doubt that the camaraderie between these women singlehandedly kept morale high and saved major league baseball through World War II.

No matter what team they’re on... — No matter what team they’re on…

...the bond between sisters cannot be broken — …the bond between sisters cannot be broken

While A League of Their Own serves mostly as a “memory movie” in which Dottie relives the memory of something she thought “was never really important to [her],” the most satisfying part of the film has to be the fast-forward to the reunion. At the end, many of the league’s players reunite to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Old friendships rekindle and emotions soar. After following these women through what must have been the best time they ever had in their youth it is refreshing to see authentic portrayals of them as older women. It feels like their lives are unfolding before my eyes. As pioneers for women in sports, they become immortalized into history through an exhibit dedicated to them. However, it’s only when they sing their Victory Song that the unending power of their sisterly bond truly can be understood:

We are the members of the All-American League.

We come from cities near and far.

We’ve got Canadians, Irishmen and Swedes,

We’re all for one, we’re one for all.

We’re All-Americans!

While ALOTO is sometimes called the “ultimate chick flick of sports” I would challenge that notion.

1. That label is problematic in the larger scheme of film culture. “Chick flick” often suggests a plotline that centers on love and romance, which, excuse me, is extremely nebulous and could be any film. The way it is thrown around in “filmspeak” often implies frivolity and artlessness, making it taboo for film lovers to love or engage with these films. Even worse, is it argues that men and women are inherently different even though there is no equivalent for films geared toward male audiences, ostracizing the experiences of women or female lead stories.

ALOTO is rather a deconstruction of that very term, because it does not present the story of the first All-American Girls Professional Baseball League as the “male version” of x,y, or z movie but instead presents a true female experience in a little-known chapter of American sports history that all audiences can appreciate and find relatable.

2. A League of Their Own is an excellent film, with great direction by Penny Marshall, remarkable acting, and superb writing – it gave us some of the most memorable lines in film history. (“There’s no crying in baseball!”) My question is: how was this film not considered for ANY Academy Awards in 1993? The truth is that films about female friendships are still not taken seriously and condemned to the seemingly second-rate status of “chick flick.” Meanwhile, dude-friend movies (Good Will Hunting, The Shawshank Redemption, The Lord of the Rings) or dude-baseball movies (Field of Dreams, Moneyball) flourish and are considered universally hilarious (Dumb and Dumber, Anchorman, The Hangover) or Oscar-worthy.

While I could ruminate on this until my hair falls out, the truth is my energy would be better spent on the many stories still waiting to be told. I can only hope that A League of Their Own inspires others to believe as I do that the female bond is a powerful narrative arc worthy of being explored outside its current limited representation.

Rhianna Shaheen is a student filmmaker and artist with hopes of writing more in the future. She recently graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a BA in Fine Arts and Minor in Film Studies and Art History. She currently spends most of her time on an epic quest for a fulltime job. Check her out on twitter!

‘Walking and Talking’ With Non-Toxic Women Friends

A short clip at the beginning of writer-director Nicole Holofcener’s first film, 1996’s ‘Walking and Talking,’ lets us know that Amelia (Catherine Keener) and Laura (Anne Heche) have been friends since adolescence. Both are in their 30s and living in New York City–Laura with her boyfriend Frank, and Amelia alone in the sort of sunlit airy apartment someone with her job, even in a pre-gentrified New York (which, like many films from then and now is also mysteriously bereft of people of color), would never be able to afford.

This post by Ren Jender appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

The pathetic lack of movies that pass the Bechdel test highlights another deficit in films: the screenwriter often forgets to give the women characters close women friends. An alien from another planet trying to figure out human behavior would get the impression from most movies (and a lot of TV) that women barely spend any time with other women. The alien would never guess that that the person an unpartnered woman (or one with a partner) is likely to confide in, to call in times of crisis or to just relax with, is not her guy “friend” (the one she might end up having sex with) but another woman, perhaps someone who she has been close to for years.

A short clip at the beginning of writer-director Nicole Holofcener’s first film, 1996’s Walking and Talking, lets us know that Amelia (Catherine Keener) and Laura (Anne Heche) have been friends since adolescence. Both are in their 30s and living in New York City–Laura with her boyfriend Frank, and Amelia alone in the sort of sunlit airy apartment someone with her job, even in a pre-gentrified New York (which, like many films from then and now is also mysteriously bereft of people of color), would never be able to afford.

Catherine Keener (in one of her first prominent film roles) and Anne Heche (before she dated Ellen DeGeneres) both look beautiful in most of the scenes without looking fussed over. Heche wears overalls and at one point wears a t-shirt with a hole in it to bed (much more likely sleepwear than the lingerie we see movie and TV women in long-term relationships wearing) while Keener, who has a job at the classified section of a newspaper (which, along with the landline phones–and long-distance bills–places this film firmly in the ’90s) wears–gasp–the same outfit more than once to her workplace.

The two women are allowed to be flawed in ways that women and girls in films rarely are. Laura is a therapist (she’s still in school but is close enough to getting her degree that she sees clients) and we can see that she’s neither great nor terrible at her job: she forgets one of her clients has a child–even though she had previously advised him to build a closer relationship with his son. During a session with another client, while he describes an angst-ridden sexual encounter, she becomes distracted as she fantasizes about fucking him.

Amelia has a penchant for saying the wrong thing: when she first sees Laura’s engagement ring she says it looks “fake,” but rushes to apologize and make amends when she realizes her mistake. She’s also surprisingly game and sweet with her ex-boyfriend’s father, who suffers from Alzheimer’s. When he repeats the same idea twice, she answers both times, “That sounds great,” with equal, unforced enthusiasm. Keener has worked with Holofcener in each of the director’s films but Amelia is both much funnier and kinder than the characters Keener played in Lovely and Amazing and Holofcener’s most recent release, the overrated Enough Said.

The women’s complexity also colors their relationships with men. We see Laura at turns deeply in love and irritated with the man who becomes her fiancé, Frank (Todd Field, who is better known now as a writer-director: his films include In The Bedroom and Little Children). Walking does a good job of showing how, especially in long-term relationships, those two emotions can be close to the surface at the same time.

Amelia is single and we see her mixed feelings about her best friend’s upcoming marriage from the beginning. I could have done without the heavy-handed symbolism of the 14-year-old cat, Big Jeans, the two women apparently shared when they were roommates–before Laura moved in with Frank–who is stricken with cancer (and given little chance of recovery). Still the film’s sharp wit saves even these scenes as when, just after they get the diagnosis Laura gently tells Amelia “I think you should put her down.” When Amelia motions to let the cat out of her arms, Laura says, “No, I mean…”

walking-and-talkingcat — The two friends are so close they even share a cat

Laura and Amelia are allowed to behave imperfectly the way male characters are allowed to be in many films, but women hardly ever are: Laura accepts the invitation from a waiter who has a crush on her to see him in a play and hangs out as his “date” afterward. Amelia has sex with the video clerk who has a crush on her (Kevin Corrigan, who was also excellent in a similar role in Slums of Beverly Hills ) even though she describes him as “the ugly guy” to Frank and Laura.

More importantly, Holofcener doesn’t let the characters wander too far from their core as decent human beings (something at which she has been less successful in her other films). When a screenwriter concedes a woman has woman friends, the “friends'” sole purpose can sometimes be to betray the friendship, so I was pleasantly surprised that when Amelia drops by to see Laura (when she’s out with the actor/waiter) and finds Frank alone (and ends up sharing hits off a bowl with him), they didn’t have sex, even though in everyday life most people are able to be friends with their friends’ partners–without ever fucking them.

The film captures the shifting dynamic of a single person’s interaction with a couple, sometimes finding a surprising affinity with a friend’s partner, sometimes the third wheel. And sometimes forming a united front with her friend, as when Frank, during a road trip, asks, “Do we have to listen to this vagina music all the way?” Both women simultaneously tell him, “Yes.”

We also see Laura cuts her “date” short, and Amelia decides she actually likes “the ugly guy”–and no longer thinks he’s ugly. We hear, at one point, in the background, Liz Phair (during her Exile in Guyville era): a good musical equivalent for the ups-and-downs of these women’s messy, romantic lives.

When it was released the film was a cornucopia of great, new talent: besides Holofcener herself (who has never made another film nearly this good), Heche, Keener and Field, Liev Shreiber (in one of his first film performances to receive any notice) plays Amelia’s ex-boyfriend, Andrew, and manages to make the character’s sad-sack neurosis charming. The film shows that all of these actors have a great gift for comedy–and makes me wish more movie comedies were worthy of them.

Although the women have tense moments and sometimes argue, they, like Frank and Laura, always eventually make up–and nothing they say or do to one another is bad enough that their friendship seems toxic, also a welcome surprise. Walking and Talking makes clear how important their relationship is to both women, even as they enter different stages of their lives. At the end when, just before Laura walks down the aisle, Amelia, wearing a pretty dress, hands her a shot of whiskey, we know these women–and their friendship–will be just fine.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veN5fuM-AwI”]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

‘Practical Magic’: Sisters as Friends, Mirrors

This guest post by Olivia London-Webb appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

Long before the “groundbreaking” Frozen, where sisters save each other, and after the classic Thelma and Louise, where saving your sister means driving off a cliff to your death, somewhere in the middle we have the fairytale that is Practical Magic.

Oh how I wish I were a witch. And really, who doesn’t? A proper broom-riding, black hat wearing, potion making, spell casting, bad-ass witch. Not surprising that Practical Magic is one of my go-to movies. It just makes me feel better. It is one of those movies that I can watch again and again and it stands the test of time. Just the look of this movie is enchanting enough–house on the water, that kitchen, with the garden and the conservatory–swoon. For me, the house and grounds becomes its own character. The house brings us into the world of this family and all of its mess. Then we get to look around inside, watching the story unfold and straining to see around corners and down hallways to all of the witchy interior design details. Hanging herbs are drying everywhere, there is fruit in bowls, bell jars, and candles–and no television or computers. Undoubtedly there is a lingering smell of brownies in the air. That house is my happy place. One of the best things about this house, as with any, are the people in it. Their world is all about family. This is a love story to be sure, but one about sisters.

We begin our story with the not uncommon theme of slut-shaming. The puritanical townspeople of old were tired of a woman having any type of sexuality and tried to hang her. She magically made the hanging rope snap and was instead banished to a remote area. She then proceeded to build her own lighthouse, cultivate the land, and give birth on her own. She sounds like a bad-ass to me. However, she was pissed. Her man never showed and she cast a spell to never fall in love again, and the spell turned into a curse. Don’t we all have an aunt like that? So now we have a family of bad-ass women. Only sisters. Two a generation. Clearly the curse destroys male chromosomes. Yes there are men who help move the plot along, but they are not the real story here.

This is a movie about women. Strong women. Sisters. Two sisters who would go through hell for each other, raised by two sisters who already have. I love that the sisters could not be more different. The sisters seems to have one “slutty” one, and one “smart.” There is also the–ever present in “chick movies”–Maiden, Mother, and Crone archetype. Either you are a slut, a mother, or an old aunt. These older aunts follow suit: Aunt Frances (Stockard Channing) is “slutty,” and Aunt Jet (Dianne Wiest) is “smart.” Then we have the heroines of our story: Gillian (Nicole Kidman) is “slutty,” and Sally (Sandra Bullock) is “smart.” There is no shortage of stereotypical pandering. The trouble-causing red-head who is sleeping around gets into trouble with the wrong man. Slut-shaming again. The redemption is, however, that the savior is her sister. The smart brunette. Ahhh.

Like all sisters should, if the phone rings in the middle of the night, and you need to get on a plane, you do. You know that there is drama, and then there is real need. So she scoops her sister up and off they go. This is where things get interesting. The boyfriend, Jimmy (Goran Visnjic), doesn’t agree with them leaving and abducts them both. One of my favorite parts is the eye communication that happens between Sally and Gilly in the rearview mirror of the car. We have all done that–caught our sister’s eye so that we can say something, but not out loud. I love that they translated that so well in this scene. Once you get this skill down, you can communicate whole thoughts and emotions, with only an eyebrow raised correctly. Only sisters can do this.

Next is something that we have all thought about for our sisters. We have all wanted to, at one time or another, kill that asshole boyfriend/husband bury him in the backyard and then have margaritas. Sure the first time you kill him, you feel a bit bad and bring him back. Then, wait…he is STILL evil and awful, so you need to kill him again. Then you get to make out with a beautiful cop who says it wasn’t your fault and can prove it with jewelry. Done and done.

This is why I love this movie. I have two real sisters in my life. One born and one chosen. I have strong powerful women everywhere I look–my friends, my mother, my sister-in-law, and my mother-in-law. I would go through hell for them. They would go through hell for me. What we are more than anything else are each other’s mirrors. We need to say and believe more of the good things about each other. I expect my sisters to tell me if that weird black hair is sprouting on my chin again. I will tell you if that man is an asshole and you deserve better. I know that no matter the distance or time you will be there. I will too. I know that if I pick up the phone in the middle of the night, my sisters would be there. I can feel it when you are crying in an airport because of a broken heart. You can tell when I am hiding the truth, even from myself. Our sisters make us better. My dream is to be those old ladies in a house together, cackling late into the night about the adventures that they have had, and the adventures on the way. Even in a fairytale like this, we see that we are all important, and that thankfully, there is a little witch in all of us.

Olivia London-Webb writes for herself as therapy. When not writing she likes to cook, drink, stare at art, and chase her children.

‘Martyrs’: Female Friendships Can Be Bloody Complex

Often in feminist criticism female friendships are discussed as a great barometer for the authenticity of the female characters. Strong bonds and healthy interactions serve the dual purpose of highlighting positive female roles and for showing the many dimensions of women as whole persons. I propose that in order to continue the push to show women as well-developed characters we also need representations of flawed female friendships.

This guest post by Deirdre Crimmins appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

Examining the female friendship featured prominently in 2008’s French horror film Martyrs can bring about different conclusions depending on the perspective of the inquest. On one hand, the relationship is the heart of the film and was the force that pulled two young girls through their childhoods at an orphanage. On the other hand, each woman clearly has a different sense of what the basis of their bond is and their friendship is what ultimately leads to their demise. Rather than acting as opposing appreciations of the female friendship in the film, the varied consequences of this friendship function as a testament to the varied consequences of real world friendships.

Martyrs is one of the new wave of French horror films referred to as New French Extremity. These films often feature women as the central characters – Inside and High Tension are two notable examples – though they are ultimately united by their extreme violence. Martyrs is no exception and is quite brutal in its unflinching assaults and deaths.

The story begins briefly in the aforementioned orphanage. Young Anna and Lucie are bunkmates who are both spooked by the dark. Though flashback we see a small glimpse of what horrors Lucie had to endure before the orphanage. Given her state of arrival, it makes sense that she is completely aloof, and that Anna codependently tries to bond with her.

The bulk of the film takes place in present day. Without giving too much away, it is safe to say that Lucie is still haunted by her early life and has not given up her quest to find the couple that tortured her as a small child. She does all that she can to hunt these monsters down, and is unable to function due to this burden of craving vengeance. Anna has been by her side all this time, and sees herself as Lucie’s caretaker. Anna cleans up Lucie’s messes (which can be impressively bloody) and tries to get Lucie to let go of her demons.

When we catch up with the pair, Lucie has just located what she believes is the house of her captors. Given her unstable nature along with the horrors that she believes these people have done to her, the massacre that follows is not surprising. This does not make the assaults any easier to watch, but to see what pain Lucie is in is helps the audience have a bit of compassion for her. With Lucie’s job done, she awaits her cathartic release.

This relief does not come. Anna’s arrival to the house serves as a cool-headed contrast to Lucie’s paranoia. Lucie is self-mutilating, hallucinates, and refutes all of Anna’s attempts to calm her.

Here is where we get to clearly see the dynamics of Lucie and Anna’s friendship. Lucie is not well. She needs someone to watch after her, but is such a danger to herself and others that the task of keeping her intact mentally and physically is impossible. Anna tries as hard as she can to keep Lucie moving towards healing but falls into the Florence Nightingale Effect: Anna is in love with Lucie. Lucie can barely see past the end of her own nose she is so consumed with rage, and Anna cannot see past her romantic feelings for Lucie.

It is this lack of symmetry in their relationship that causes so many issues. Anna must know on some level that she is not trained to help Lucie get better. She is not a nurse or a psychologist, and given Lucie’s far-along psychosis a warm bedside manner is not going to have a significant impact. This nurturing is squarely attributed to Anna’s attraction to Lucie and not to a motherly nature or platonic love. As Anna is trying to comfort Lucie after a fit, Anna takes the opportunity to try to kiss her. A kiss would not benefit Lucie at this moment and is a selfish move by Anna. It exposes her denial of Lucie’s demented state.

Lucie conversely sees Anna as an assistant. She calls her to drive to and from her massacres. Lucie has Anna clean up blood and pushes her to affirm her paranoid notions even when Anna resists placating her.

This is not to say that their relationship is completely negative. Each woman gets a bit of something that they need from the other. More importantly, however, is the fact that they are the only constant family that the other has ever known. From the orphanage to today neither has had another friend or family. The shared history has made then dependent on one another and they would both be completely alone without each other.

Women have complex relationships that develop and change over time. At the very center of Martyrs we have a sordid and multifaceted female friendship that is equally functional and dysfunctional. The filmmakers have gone out of their way to craft a representation of a friendship that cannot be quickly summarized. While these women are both horribly flawed, their corresponding flawed relationship reflects the complexity that women everywhere experience with their own friends. Though I do hope your own friendships have a lower body count.

Deirdre Crimmins is a staff writer for AllThingsHorror.com and wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romeo. She lives in Boston with her husband and two black cats.

‘St. Trinian’s’: Girlish Wiles and Cunning Friendships

This guest post by Bethany Ainsworth-Coles appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

SPOILERS AHEAD

St. Trinian’s is a British comedy legend. In the series of films, a rabble of girls are taught by a selection of oddities and petty criminals, brewing vodka, and doing what they do best. Of course what they do best is illegal, but that’s what these girls are meant to do. In 2007, the films were resurrected with St. Trinian’s, which like so much media directed toward girls, was panned by critics. However, what it is at its heart is girls banding together to save their school with their teachers and winning. It doesn’t matter how they dress, what group they belong to, or their age.

Now the school itself run by the fantastic Miss Camilla Fritton (played by Rupert Everett) and its group of misfit teaching staff includes the big drinker Matron (Celia Imrie) as Camilla’s best friend and confidante. Their friendship is lovely as it is framed not just as two old women best friends. They aren’t the standard old ladies of film past; they are hard drinking, pill-poppers who look after each other, such as turning up to support Camilla when her dog is killed.

Matron and Miss Fritton judging people

The friendships throughout the film defy the general limits that films put on girls’ cinema. The groups (e.g. the emos, posh tottiess, chavs, geeks, etc.) frequently band together. When word gets round that the school needs money, all the girls band together to save it by robbing the national gallery of “Girl with a Pearl Earring.” Isn’t that great? Girls banding together to perform a successful heist with cover, dynamite, and some seriously fantastic dancing is just one of the reasons this film deserves more love. The girls work together–every group from the feral first years to the hippie girl (Juno Temple), and even the school secretary joins in.

The girls working together

Whilst most of the groups already know and tolerate each other, Taylor (a chav as played by Kathryn Drysdale) and Andrea (an emo as played by Paloma Faith–yes that Paloma Faith) become friends through circumstance. Whilst they despise each other since they are from different social circles, when the geeks choose them as the two other girls to actually steal the picture, they slowly become friends. Yes, it’s that trope again, but this time it really works. Their relationship is integral–even though Andrea inadvertently strands the head girl on the other side with the picture–she and Taylor both celebrate when they win. Realistically, they don’t become best friends either but they grow a new tolerance for each other that is certainly an admirable thing to show in a film for girls.

Whilst they work outside their groups, the groups are shown as equally important. Unlike films that actively scathe group systems (e.g. Mean Girls), St. Trinian’s endorses it. This is especially seen with the posh totties’ Chelsea, Chloe, and Peaches (Tamsin Egerton, Antonia Bernath, and Amara Karan). At face value, they seem like spoiled rich girls; however, they are actually bright charming women who simply enjoy their lifestyles and how they look. They win the quiz through Chloe’s intelligence, not through looks. Also they are pretty strong women who take no prisoners, especially dealing with creepy men taking their trousers down in their dorm room. Of course, everyone knows the only way to deal with that is to chuck that nasty piece of work out of the window and into the fountain below.

Now another interesting friendship is between Camilla and the head girl, Kelly (Gemma Arterton). Camilla doesn’t treat her as someone lesser but treats her as an equal and gives her tasks that she knows will be good for Kelly. However when Kelly can’t finish the heist, instead of letting the girl take the fall, she gets out a grappling hook, zips over, and saves her. It’s not seen as a weakness of Kelly’s either; her needing help is a positive. She can rely on Camilla to save her just like she can rely on her school.

Now whilst this seems like an odd collection of friendships, it is an important selection of lessons. It fosters the idea that girls working together will always be better than scheming men, and will always sort things out even if they do need help. Girls are fearless: willing to steal, blow up iron bars, fight back against creeps, and speak out. And most importantly, it’s OK to make mistakes. The girls also enjoy themselves doing it. What’s better than spending an evening repainting their spiv’s car whilst nattering on to their mates? Nothing apart from convincing the general public your school is exceptional. Which it is in a way. The girls enjoy being themselves, modifying their uniforms to match their personalities, and embracing being girls. There are no uniform codes, no rules against makeup, they brew vodka in science, and aren’t frowned upon for that. They may not be the demure schoolgirls people expect, but they sure are the best.

Like all good films for girls, it suffered like all good films for women, and was panned by male critics who didn’t understand why girls could be so fantastic.

A tense moment for everyone

The soundtrack for St. Trinian’s even consists of mainly girls. It features everyone from the Noisettes, Lady Sovereign, and Girls Aloud does the theme song. This entire film celebrates female friendships and girls in general. Isn’t that fabulous? It is a film with genuine adventure, laughs that don’t depend on mocking the girls but laughing with them. In fact, all the men are pointless and ripe for being used for their cause. This cast of male characters includes Stephen Fry, the Bursar (Toby Jones), the spiv Flash Harry (Russell Brand), Fritton’s own brother (Everett Still), and Geoffrey Thwaites (Colin Firth), who is Camilla’s vague love interest–and antagonist–who is exposed at the end in more ways than one.

In St. Trinian’s, girls are the most important. Their friendships are valued above anything else because without them their scheming wouldn’t work and then they would be in normal schools… and who wants that?

Bethany Ainsworth-Coles is a young writer from England who enjoys over analyzing things and watching films. She tweets over at https://twitter.com/wierdbuthatsok

Best Frenemies Forever

This guest post by Emanuela Betti appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

Can women be friends? Or, most importantly, can two women who share the same man be friends? The depiction of genuinely loving and caring female friends has found its way onto many movies and TV shows, but when it comes to the idea of a more complex situation—the “frenemies”—it’s harder to find characters that do it justice. There is a shallow notion that when two women want the same man, they turn into hair-pulling, catfighting brats. Some movies, such as Mean Girls, present a world of two-faced friendships and passive-aggressive competitiveness, and although girls and women that act that way do exist, it’s refreshing to see a different take on the “frenemies” trope.

Female characters gain more depth when we realize that, despite their hatred for each other, they are still capable of maintaining a glimmer of respect for their enemy. In the past years, Scandal has been building up two of the most interesting frenemies on TV—Olivia Pope and Mellie Grant. Both women want the same man (President Grant), and both women have a different type of relationship with him—but Mr. President aside, throughout the show the two women develop a complex rapport with one another: one which undoubtedly has many instances of resentment and bitterness, but also a slowly developing sense of respect for the other person. It’s startling to watch Mellie’s resilient self-dignity—yet also vulnerability—when she asks Olivia to help with her husband’s campaign; there is also a sense of empathy on Olivia’s side when she discovers that Mellie was assaulted. If we really have to watch two women fight over the same man, it’s at least a relief when the two women are smart, self-reliant, and civilized beings.

The idea of complex female frenemies is not exactly new to cinema. Two superb foreign thrillers have managed to portray women who are sharing or have shared the same man, but they don’t succumb to the stereotype of the hair-pulling, backstabbing brats. Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (1955) and Kim Ki-young’s The Housemaid (1960) present a world in which women are not squealing for a man’s affection, but develop an interesting and emotionally complex alliance with the “other woman.”

Les Diaboliques is a French movie about a wife (Christina) and her husband’s mistress (Nicole) teaming up to murder the husband (Michel). Christina owns and runs a boarding school where Nicole teaches, and Michel exudes his authority as if he ran the place. The story begins as a simple murder story with two intriguing female protagonists, but halfway through it becomes a different movie—a creepy thriller in which the wife, Christina, is haunted by her dead husband’s ghost.

Despite the exciting twists and turns, it’s not so much the murder that drives the film, but rather the strange friendship between the two women. Christina is the typical mousy wife who allows her husband to beat and condescend to her; Nicole, on the other hand, is the typical femme-fatale bombshell, a hybrid between Betty Rizzo and Catherine Tramell from Basic Instinct (and I wasn’t surprised that the role was played by Sharon Stone in the 1996 American remake). The relationship between the women is rather intriguing, if not strange: Nicole was having an affair with Christina’s husband, but that is also what brings the two women together. Both get tired of the husband’s cocky and manipulative ways, so they decide to plan his murder.

During moments of calm, we watch Christina and Nicole discuss like old friends, complaining about him, and coolly remember how they hated each other—how a jealous Christina used to carry a knife around, and how Nicole might have wished for Christina’s death. There is a startling sense of dignity and respect for the other, which is often lacking when we’re faced with two women who competed for the affection of a man. Christina is often depicted as physically and emotionally weak, leading Nicole to affectionately treat her like a younger sister—even maternally, when for example she tells Christina not to bite her nails, in order not to give away her nervousness about the murder. Nicole is the only person that defends and consoles Christina when her husband degrades her in public, and during those moments we observe an unspoken yet mutual understanding between the two women who have been abused and mistreated by the same man.

Housemaid is a South Korean thriller about a young woman who is hired as a housemaid and ends up feuding with the woman of the household. To sum it up, The Housemaid is a long and twisted cautionary tale about the dangers of having an attractive and seductive young woman in the household, and how a casual affair can turn into a deadly game of manipulation. Events escalate dangerously and gruesomely, and even the innocent and sickly wife reveals an evil side. One of the interesting aspects of the story is the twisted relationship between the housemaid and the wife: the housemaid, despite her psychotic nature toward the husband and children, shows nothing but fear and submission in front of the wife. The wife strategically allows the other woman to remain in the household as a means to keep an eye on her and avoid a scandal.

The most twisted part is halfway though the movie, when both women “share” the husband. They’re not exactly friends, but it would be too easy to label them enemies; both women have an unspoken mutual understanding that the husband “belongs” to them, and they manipulate him to get at each other. Both women appear to know what limits the other woman can go to, and that kind of character relationship goes beyond the simple backstabbing teenagers in Mean Girls, or the comic strips in which Betty and Veronica are both tugging at Archie’s arms.

Emanuela Betti is a part-time writer, occasional astrologer, neurotic pessimist by day and ball-breaking feminist by night. She miraculously graduated with a BA in English and Creative Writing, and writes about music and movies on her blog.

‘The First Wives Club’ and First World “Feminism”

But the focus on “getting everything” was a little hard to stomach from women living in huge condos in the heart of New York with an interior designer on their payroll. Somehow it felt like the message was getting a little lost in the middle of all the high-society hob-nobbing – there was nothing particularly universal about it, and any feminism that was being communicated was certainly of a rarefied kind that most of us wouldn’t be able to access.

This cross-post by Amanda Lyons previously appeared at her blog, Mrs. Meows Says, and appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

In 1996, the year The First Wives Club was released, I was in my mid teens, and it felt like a good, hopeful time to be a young woman. Grunge and riot grrrl seemed to have ousted the need to conform to restrictive conventions of feminine fashion and behaviour. The music charts were full of talented and unique female artists. Movies and television were starting to show more complex, and sometimes even bad-ass, female characters. Looking back, I feel grateful to experience those difficult formative years in such a time.

It was definitely the right cultural climate for this film. I remember it was featured a lot in the media at the time – a story about a group of discarded first wives plotting revenge on their ungrateful ex-husbands definitely had a whiff of the zeitgeist about it. Indeed, so much so that the book was purchased by a movie studio before it was published as a novel. (The more hidebound publishing industry rejected the novel 26 times. I’m pretty sure I remember seeing the author, Olivia Goldsmith, on Oprah talking about this, saying that many of these publishers thought the male characters were portrayed “too negatively”.)

Though I thought this movie sounded like a positive cultural event, and quite possibly also a good wheeze, I missed it at the time. So when it happened to be playing on Foxtel on a recent cold Sunday night, I was more than happy to stay in the lounge with the gas heater all rugged up and warm and make up for my neglect.

What was I expecting? I guess a funny and entertaining revenge romp with a feminist punch? What did I get instead? Well, not that…

Probably the most entertaining thing about it was the long and delightful roll-call of actors I recognised from subsequent other things. Dan Hedaya! Victor Garber! Marcia Gay Harden! And of course the peerless Bronson Pinchot. Yay! That was good fun, and I was very glad they got to be part of something that would have given them a big boost at the time.

The next thing I noticed was the extremely overdone and intrusive score. Guys, I cannot believe this score was nominated for an Oscar. To me it felt like an obnoxious guest at a party who keeps grabbing your arm when you’re trying to talk to other people so he can tell you a really long and boring/offensive story that scares all other guests away from you. Hated it.

My second major hate: Diane Keaton, but I guess that’s probably more of a personal thing, although a t least I know I’m not alone. I get why Woody Allen loved her so much – she’s totally the female version of him. Same schtick in every single role she plays: blinky, quirky, neurotic, and when she’s required to get emotional, shrieky. Also ineffably smug. Teeth-clenchingly annoying.

Next problem: the characters. Was this the fault of the script, the acting, or the direction? I would say an unholy collusion of all three. All the characters are shallow and unlikeable, including the women you are supposed to be rooting for. Nobody seems remotely like a real person – the husbands are drawn as dastardly cardboard villains, the first wives are shrieky caricatures, the second wives are completely one dimensional bimbos. The gags and one-liners are broad, awkward and the timing is just a little bit off every single time. The set pieces are cringey and the plot is just confusing. The revenge plots were a bit unclear and vague to me, as if the writers weren’t quite sure how to pull them off.

I think part of the frustration was that while the story was addressing a real and genuinely affecting issue – the culturally sanctioned discardability of women as they grow older – it opted to bury it inside a combination of broad slapstick and an extremely privileged, neo-liberal kind of feminism concerned solely with economic gain. I was somewhat in wonderment at the moneyed, ten-percenter world these women moved in. Of course separation, abandonment, betrayal, and heartbreak are a great leveller – all of us can suffer whatever our bank-balance. But the focus on “getting everything” was a little hard to stomach from women living in huge condos in the heart of New York with an interior designer on their payroll. Somehow it felt like the message was getting a little lost in the middle of all the high-society hob-nobbing – there was nothing particularly universal about it, and any feminism that was being communicated was certainly of a rarefied kind that most of us wouldn’t be able to access.

Perhaps key is the fact that the movie was written, directed and produced by men – or more specifically, men who shared the publishing world’s squeamishness about “man-bashing”. As producer Scott Rudin stated in The New York Times:

“When I took this on, I didn’t want a feminist manifesto, which it threatened to be,” he said. ”Initially, it made all the men terrible and was kind of anti-marriage. I didn’t want that. The film is really a satire. The amount of moaning and wailing is an object of satire. We’re not taking anything too seriously.”

Rudin, like so many others, accepted the fallacy conflating feminism with hating men rather than its simple belief that women and men “should have equal rights and opportunities.” That this conflation is so often promulgated is tiresome. It’s also tiresome that charges of “man-bashing”against films are so loud and strident when negative, and even harmful portrayals of women in film and television and everything are so commonplace we don’t even notice them most of the time. And the effect of this kind of distaste for anything remotely feminist in the stories we tell can cut the heart – and the ovaries -right out of them.

Feminism is not the only thing that’s diluted in the adaption of this story from book to movie – certainly the differences between the film and the book seem very revealing. For example, the complete excision of Annie’s (Diane Keaton) daughter’s Down Syndrome – she is turned into a lesbian, instead. (and the way she’s portrayed one sometimes wonders if the writers thought they were just swapping one disability for another??). This removes the onus for Brenda (Bette Midler) to become a lesbian herself, clearing the way for her to have a (SPOILER ALERT) reconciliation with her dastardly husband Morty, a strange and sudden reversal in the storyline of the film.

But one of the most interesting differences is how they choose to “avenge” their friend Cynthia, whose husband’s betrayal resulted in her suicide and provided the impetus for the first wives to reunite, rediscover their friendship and begin their club in the first place.

In the book, the women go after Cynthia’s husband and bring him down for insider trading, to his personal and financial ruin. But in the movie, the women decide that personal revenge is not noble enough – so instead they blackmail their ex-husbands into providing money to open a Crisis Centre for Women. This is a safe aspect of feminism; it’s hard to argue against helping the most vulnerable in society, and it’s easy in our culture to accept women in the role of victims – and indeed, the centre is named after their friend Cynthia Swann Griffin, the movie’s ultimate victim and sacrificial lamb.

The final scene – the opening party for the Crisis Centre – is intended to be the triumphal close to the movie, but instead it feels patronising and smug, the worst kind of charity. The party is ostentatious, opulent, and replete with the kind of economic excess that seems to cover the characters’ lifestyles like a thin film of oil. It is of course stuffed with the rich and fabulous, New York high society elite. There is a lot of back-slapping. Ivanka Trump appears, as well as Gloria Steinem, in a vague shout-out to “feminism.” There are no specifics discussed as to what kind of crises the centre will be helping women with, what kinds of women will be helped, or how. The husbands have been threatened with destruction but ultimately this female anger has been contained, and now the men are simply implored to open their pocketbooks. In the final scene the three women engage in a truly embarrassing song-and-dance routine, singing Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” and dancing like your mum doing karaoke at your cousin’s 21st. The ultimate in Boomer smugness, and of course led by the inimitably irritating Diane Keaton.

In the novel, as the American Popular Culture Archive explains,

“Once the women decide to act, they exude power and energy. Brenda asks Elise, ‘Did anyone ever tell you you’re beautiful when you’re angry?’ Elise replies, ‘No. Mostly they liked me passive. But those days are over, my friend. I’m changing.'”

This movie adaption is, quite frankly, a mess, and seems to replace female power and agency with money. I’m no book adaption purist – I accept that the two mediums are different, and changes have to be made in translation. But in this case, it doesn’t seem that the changes were especially serving the ends of telling a story and preserving a message, so much as containing it to make it more marketable. But unfortunately the end result is clunky, unloveable, and not even entertaining. Perhaps it met the zeitgeist in 1996, but I think that it should probably stay there.

Amanda Lyons is a writer from Middle Earth (AKA New Zealand). By day she writes on finance, by night whatever takes her fancy at http://mrsmeowssays.blogspot.co.nz/.

Scarlett and Melanie: The Ultimate BFFs

This guest post by Jennifer Hollie Bowles appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

Gone With the Wind is one of my favorite movies of all time. Of course, it has its social ills, historical flaws, and damn if super-strong Scarlett doesn’t whine over men a lot, but I still love it. The dynamic relationships and subtleties of emotions and interactions captured on film is a classically beautiful adventure to behold. Yeah, so I dig the movie, and I’ve always been a fan of Scarlett, her southern spitfire, and her bold feminist acts.

I’ve seen the movie at least a dozen times. When I first watched it as an adolescent, I remember almost hating Melanie. She was so mealy mouthed and annoying. I was, however, not in tune with the more demure, mature, calm, centered, and otherwise introverted part of myself at the time. Flash forward five years, and I start to see Melanie in a different light. Flash forward a decade, and I love her as much as I do Scarlett.

Scarlett was often a bitch to Melanie, and even though Scarlett was a bitch to everyone unless she wanted something, she was an uber-bitch to Melanie on purpose—most of the time. Until Melanie needed her. Then she was the most helpful bitch in the world. Melanie, on the other hand, was the epitome of kindness and compassion to everyone—most of the time. Until Scarlett needed her. Then she was kindest you-can’t-say-no-to-me bitch in the world.

One of the most intriguing things about the extreme Scarlet-Melanie polarity is that their best and worst traits were ultimately highlighted through their friendship. Together, they show the manifested metaphors of fire and water. Scarlett maintained a world view of passion; Melanie maintained a world view of non-judgment. Every time that Melanie seemed weak and dispassionate, she rose to the occasion to exhibit passion with Scarlett, and every time that Scarlett seemed strong and judgmental, she rose to the occasion to exhibit compassion with Melanie.

Melanie’s character was filled with a rare sort of gratitude that most people utterly lack. She was able to read others and feel gratitude for their existence, no matter how different it was from her own (take her kindness toward the prostitute Belle as a prime example). She mentored everyone around her, and she was continuously counted upon to aid those in need. Melanie also had a very deep love for Scarlett right from the beginning. She revered (and perhaps envied in her own way) Scarlett’s hot-headedness, and she expressed her love for Scarlett throughout the film.

Scarlett, on the other hand, was filled with a rare sort of will power and drive that most people utterly lack. She would forge through any circumstance in order to not only survive, but thrive. She was counted upon to make things work when others failed. Scarlett had a very deep jealousy of Melanie, and she expressed criticism and indignation about Melanie countless times throughout the film. However, while the movie does not expose Scarlett’s unfolding realizations per se, we definitely discover Scarlett appreciating Melanie as the story progresses. Scarlett sees Melanie’s strength in an unforgettable scene where Scarlett kills a “Yankee” intruder. Melanie yells out the window and promptly makes up a lie about the gunshot so the others in the household won’t worry. Scarlett says, “What a cool eye you are, Melly.”

An amazing juxtaposition of their characters occurs later in the film. A couple of gossiping no-gooders find Scarlett and Ashley (Melanie’s husband) hugging. Oddly enough, it is the one scene in which Scarlett is not really being inappropriate with Ashley. Everyone in town knows about the hug, and everyone is bashing Scarlett for her shameful behavior. Rhett coerces Scarlett into wearing a gorgeous, sexy scarlet dress and drops her off all by herself at Melanie’s house for Ashley’s big social birthday party.

Both Rhett and Scarlett expect Melanie to publicly throw Scarlett out of her house for being inappropriate with her husband. Melanie does no such thing. She goes against the suggestions and wishes of everyone in the room and embraces Scarlett, doting on her with a plethora of kind, welcoming statements. She even asks Scarlett to help her receive guests, and then refers to Scarlett in the presence of Ashley as “our Scarlett.” Scarlett is obviously immensely grateful for Melanie’s character, friendship, understanding, and behavior in this scene, and Melanie is obviously driven by her own passionate motives to do what she wants, regardless of what others think—just as Scarlett would.

The implications for Scarlett’s ridiculous pining over Ashley and her friendship with Melanie is a complicated one. On the one hand, it seems as though Scarlett is driven by something she can’t put her finger on when it comes to her obsession with Ashley, and Melanie just happens to be his wife. Yet, if we observe closely, we find that Scarlett is as drawn to Melanie as she is Ashley, and near the end of the film, we see Scarlett identifying the highest ideals of a lost way of life with both of them. She loves and yearns for them both along with her love and yearning for lost southern culture because it is in her nature to want what is difficult, and in this case, impossible to attain.

If we get really psychological, we find that Melanie and Ashley are both representations of everything Scarlett is not. It is easier, however, for Scarlett to outwardly—project and individuate—through Ashley, the shadow male/animus archetype of her psyche, rather than the far too close anima/shadow female archetype of her psyche.

Regardless of how psychological or interpretive you want to get with Scarlett and Melanie’s friendship, it serves as an invaluable example for how women can accept, value, and interact with one another. For example, if a woman dresses more provocatively than you, perhaps, as Melanie stated, she is just more “high-spirited,” and she can’t help that the men just “naturally flock to her.” If a woman needs help during childbirth, nothing else matters but helping her, just as Scarlett helped her “Melly.”

It’s suggested all along that Melanie understood Scarlett, and Scarlett understood Melanie. It’s as if Melanie knew all about Scarlett’s pining for Ashley and the underlying reasons why she felt that way, and Scarlett knew all about Melanie’s knowing acceptance. On her deathbed, Melanie asks to see Scarlett, who is the last person she communicates with before she dies. Scarlett receives Melanie’s last words with respect, holding on to their guiding significance and meanings with deeply rooted trust. The entire dynamic of their relationship just makes sense at that point: their bond was unbreakable.

Jennifer Hollie Bowles is a widely published multi-genre writer, including satire, poetry, op-eds, erotica, horoscope columns, fiction, eco living blogs, how-tos, and beyond. She lives in the Greater Boston area with her amazing husband and their blissed-out pit bull. She enjoys cooking from scratch, teaching creative writing workshops, and providing unique services via www.holisticnook.com.

Family, Friendship, and Getting By: The Two Mrs. Harts of ‘Reba’

Like many of us, I’m a child of divorce, and I saw firsthand the lasting effects of infidelity and separation. For years, I’ve turned on ‘Reba’ because I find it comforting; everything from the stills of the cluttered kitchen to Reba’s adorable southern twang make me feel very tranquil as I clean or type on my laptop. I detect similarities to my own experiences, such as living in close proximity to a parent’s ex or a father who seems to abandon his former life for a newer, shinier one. ‘Reba’ normalizes these experiences and reminds viewers that every family has its issues.

Written by Jenny Lapekas.

Like many of us, I’m a child of divorce, and I saw firsthand the lasting effects of infidelity and separation. For years, I’ve turned on Reba because I find it comforting; everything from the stills of the cluttered kitchen to Reba’s adorable southern twang make me feel very tranquil as I clean or type on my laptop. I detect similarities to my own experiences, such as living in close proximity to a parent’s ex or a father who seems to abandon his former life for a newer, shinier one. Reba normalizes these experiences and reminds viewers that every family has its issues.

Reba McEntire herself is a sort of meta presence on the show since she plays herself, in a sense–her character’s name is Reba Hart, she sings the theme song at the beginning of each show (“I’m a Survivor”), and her own values seem to be infused into the show’s script and episodes. The character of Reba also seems to be a direct reflection of Reba the person and musician: genuine, caring, and down-to-earth. We enjoy her interactions with Barbra Jean, whether they’re volatile or pleasant. We like it when they bond and get along (not just for the family but because they are true friends), but we also like it when the two fight or when Reba expresses her annoyance at the tall blonde’s routine antic behavior. Certainly, the show’s plot is unrealistic, but I’d argue that it’s still worthwhile to explore this unique friendship shared by two very different women who discover they indeed have more in common than Brock.

It took Reba several seasons to warm up to BJ's manic energy. — It took Reba several seasons to warm up to BJ’s manic energy.

The impossibility of the “new wife” (and former mistress) and ex-wife becoming best friends is at the forefront of this implausibility. Brock is a good father and still “visits” as if he never moved out. Rather than focus on the unbelievable nature of this female friendship, I’d suggest we turn our attention to the healthy post-divorce relationship we see between Reba and Brock. Sure, it’s fantastical and silly, a departure from reality, a pleasant vision of what could be, but also an image of maturity and sophisticated understanding amongst adults–although Kyra usually ends up being the only “adult” when familial conflict arises. The show’s framework suggests not that this type of female friendship is possible (especially involving rivalry and “sharing” a man, in some sense), but that families function even when they don’t function, that hostility and resentment are normal and even healthy components of any family unit.

BJ and Reba in a 'Single White Female' moment. — BJ and Reba in a *Single White Female* moment.

When Reba’s friend asks her, “How can you even let that woman in your house?!” Reba calmly explains that the kids need to see their father and BJ (go ahead and giggle) is now “part of the package.” However, the relationship between the two Mrs. Harts grows into something more complicated than that: Reba genuinely likes BJ. Contrary to the fear that she may be seen as a powerless doormat, Reba displays incredible strength, patience, and maturity by inevitably becoming BJ’s best friend, despite Reba’s best attempts to prevent the pair’s apparent non-relationship from evolving into anything greater. Viewers may interpret this move as a decision to lay down and endure Brock’s adultery; however, the friendship the women share is an acknowledgment of forgiveness, a radical surrender that frames the world as one that keeps spinning in the face of conflict. There is in fact life after divorce.

BJ represents a very negative stereotype and a cliche: the mistress who ruined a marriage by having an affair with another woman’s husband. However, BJ challenges this stereotype we long to hate so much; she is a larger than life presence, a walking, breathing caricature that we come to adore. As the family celebrates Jake’s birthday party, Kyra eloquently explains that it’s not enough for BJ to plan or attend the party, she is the party. She substitutes the ogre we imagine her to be, the “type of woman” who breaks up a marriage, who sleeps with a married man. BJ humanizes the typecast role assigned to her–she’s charming, she longs to help those around her, and she’s a genuinely good person. Reba explains, “This hasn’t been easy for me, Barbra Jean,” and BJ retorts, “It has just been a freaking picnic for me!” As BJ explains that she’s the “other woman” and is affected by the gossip and phoniness that surround her as well, we’re allowed a glimpse of what it’s like to be blamed for destroying a marriage. Deep down, all BJ wants is to be liked and accepted. In fact, sometimes it seems that she’s willing to forfeit her marriage with Brock in favor of taking on Reba as a permanent partner instead.

The pair attend a women's self-defense class, but inevitably beat up each other. — The pair attend a women’s self-defense class, but inevitably beat up each other.

When an elderly babysitter proves incapable of managing the kids and the household in Reba’s absence, BJ steps in, cooking delicious meals, organizing the kitchen, and even pouring Reba a glass of wine to help her relax after a long day. Inevitably, Jake hugs BJ and calls her “Mommy,” and Reba is left bitter and horrified. During “girl talk,” Brock wanders in and asks BJ if she’s ever coming home, and BJ informs him that she didn’t make enough food to include him in dinner. Thrilled with BJ’s domestic skills, Reba tells Brock, “I’m starting to see why you left me for her,” and Brock says, “You’re the one with the new wife.” As a result, the house becomes a venue to celebrate this pseudo lesbian relationship, where the needs of the kids are put first, and yes, Brock is still a guest. Although none of the characters realize it, this short-lived partnership is one of great power, demonstrating household productivity and childcare at its zenith.

At times, the trio also seems to mimic a polygamous relationship, such as when Reba tries to repair Brock and BJ’s rocky marriage by counseling them and even offering tips on how to improve their sex life. Much of Reba’s advice is comically common sense, such as instructing Brock to tell BJ that he reversed his vasectomy or telling BJ not to have an emotional affair with the OnStar guy inside the couple’s car. Despite Brock’s past indiscretions, Reba’s priority is the wellness of her family, which includes a successful second marriage for her kids’ father. It’s no mistake the family’s last name is Hart; Reba is clearly the heart of the family, the force around which the others gather, the light BJ finds herself so drawn to.

BJ is eager to exploit Reba's temporary blindness in order to gain her trust. — BJ is eager to exploit Reba’s temporary blindness in order to gain her trust.

Even if mine isn’t a popular assessment of BJ’s character, we must admit that we need BJ’s wacky shenanigans to counterbalance Reba’s responsibility, earnestness, and sophistication; there’s no denying that the women’s joint energy creates a dynamic force that carries much of the show. BJ’s character challenges our assumptions about the labels we quickly and often unfairly place on women both real and fictional: home-wrecker, whore, gold-digger, etc. While Reba offers guidance to the naive BJ, the nutty blonde often includes Reba in her misadventures, such as setting up Reba on a blind date or caring for the stubborn redhead after undergoing corrective eye surgery. Regardless of how we feel about the plot of Reba, BJ bursting through the door unannounced and uninvited, along with Brock freely coming and going in a house he no longer lives in draws not an image of turmoil but one of family. BJ’s involvement as a stepmother doesn’t spell dysfunction; rather, the relationships we see on the ABC Family show are nothing if not healthy and honest. In fact, the unlikelihood of the Hart clan’s situation may be exactly why Reba has had such success. My advice: Let the marital stuff go; sit back and enjoy the fact that we’ve been drugged by a witty script, inspiring messages, and a variety of comedic personalities who easily suspend disbelief, all on one lovely show.

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Jenny holds a Master of Arts in English, and she is a part-time instructor at a community college in Pennsylvania. Her areas of scholarship include women’s literature, menstrual literacy, and rape-revenge cinema. She lives with two naughty chihuahuas. You can find her on WordPress and Pinterest.