Mmmmh?

"But, perhaps the biggest challenge still is to imagine and construct healthier and sustainable gender norms and relations for both men and women"

I think I read something like this about 20 years ago.

I wonder WHO gets to decide what the healthier and sustainable gender norms are?

How about forgetting the gender stuff, and just seeing how each individual relationship works? What's wrong with stirring the dip, if you like playing hostess? Or staying home to raise the kids while your wife works? Or for that matter, while your husband works?

If two people are going to make it, surely within that couple, they have to find their own way, make it work for themselves, and sod what opinion-makers, or Hollywood, or Behrendt and Tuccillo say?

Maybe I'm naive - and I'm single, after all, but I think relationships are a bit more complicated than one person having a party and the other one stirring the dip.

I think our obsession with categorising everything is compounding the problem. Sterotypes are really a marketing tool developed to sell movies, mod-cons, government policy etc. It's hard to escape them, we just need to accept that, while there may be trends and similarities, people are individuals who need to work it all out for themselves.

I always wanted to write one of those 'dating rules' books but reality got in the way. I know what the writers mean but it's pretty 'glass half full'.

It took the cognititve therapists in the 50s and 60s to say, well, yeah, just because he or she ain't in to you, that ain't a reflection on you. Hard lesson to learn that one - and not necessarily overly political either. Just life.

Still, it's good to read commentary that is alive to silly American kiss, pout and whine fantasies.

After 100 years of producing crap what would you expect of the movie industry? Maybe the authors would prefer weak emasculated men who allow themselves to be dominated by females. We have enough whimpish men today who neglect to lead and love their families. Often the woman who starts out wanting to wear the pants finds herself exasperated that the one she has in subjection (mainly by sex) won't discipline the children or make a clear decision in life.

I would rather a faithful woman in the kitchen with an apron cooking for her man a meal then a loud mouthed woman dressed like a prostitute half sozzled at a bar. The sooner the feminist stop bucking what is natural and accept the fact that many woman like having a man (not a whimp) the better. Funny that many of the daughters of feminist have rejected their mothers mantras.

Fascinating.

I haven't seen the movie in question, nor have I read the book. I strongly suspect that this situation is unlikely to change.

But one thing about its description in this piece simply shouted out at me.

Gigi.

Is it just coincidence, or was it a piece of Hollywood subliminal trickery, to name the main character after the eponymous heroine of a fifty-year-old musical, where...

"She's a bright little teen-age tomboy living in Paris at the century's turn and highly resistant to the notion, insisted upon by her grandmother and great-aunt, that she should grow up. Particularly is she resistant to their intention that she should learn all the graces and qualities of a lady so that she may become an accomplished courtesan."

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9E00EFDC173DE53BBC4E52DFB3668383649EDE

An accomplished courtesan? What could Hollywood have been thinking?

I have to wonder how the authors of this piece would have reviewed that particular "Gigi".

"...the hero is clearly built up as an elegant, blasé young bachelor with an amiable indifference toward the child, it is plain that he's being set for dazzling when the butterfly bursts from the cocoon. It does and he is — all in the spirit of good, racy, romantic fun."

The subtext of the 1958 "Gigi" is quite appalling. It is entirely accepted, for example, that the role of women is as mere chattels. No preparing of dip for her, though. Just the life of a kept woman.

It would be difficult, I suggest, for anyone in 2009 to watch without squirming with vicarious embarrassment.

But the question it leaves me with is simply this: what was its impact?

As the authors parting shot has it...

"...perhaps the biggest challenge still is to imagine and construct healthier and sustainable gender norms and relations for both men and women."

I'd suggest that we have at least made a modicum of progress in that direction. And more importantly, that Collette's Gigi-in-celluloid had absolutely no adverse impact on that progress, whatsoever.