Manufacturing the Perfect Female

I just saw The Stepford Wives last night. What a movie. I was rather blown away by the end because I wasn't sure what would happen, and I was half expecting America, like Bollywood, to reinforce the patriarchal notions that we all grow up with, and that are usually snuffed out of us at the slightest peep of discontent. Brilliant concept, excellent acting from those who count, and quite a good end too! Brief though... they didn't maintain the suspense as long as they possibl could have.

I'm not going to give you any spoilers, because really, you must see it. It's based on the book of the same name, written in 1973 by Ira Levin. It's an almost prophetic book based on the wisdom of women embedded in their genes and in their learning about surviving in the world of men. Levin uses this wisdom to explore the age-old tense power dynamic between men and women, and its problems in an emerging era of female liberation and their demand for equality, and in doing so, ends up giving it a whole new dimension, the desire or possibility of which, surprisingly, doesn't seem as far-fetched as it initially looks.

Wouldn't every man love to have a perfectly coiffed, perfectly made-up wife, with a lovely hourglass figure, preferably blonde hair, 50's dressed with poofy skirts and tight waists, who is perpetually grocery shopping for them, can whip up snacks in a jiffy, has a spotless home, is always smiling and happy, has deafening orgasms (with minimal effort on his part I'm sure) and who willingly will get him a bowl of nachos instead of cuddling up right after? That's the premise of this film - the desire of men, increasingly outsmarted and outperformed by a new generation of women, who have their own minds and speak them, to regress to an 'ideal' era in which women are perfect slaves in every way, have minimal identity of their own, living only to serve them and boost their egos. That's what the women are, in the utopian, yet strangely Twilight Zone-ish town of Stepford, in which women relax at the spa and the men at the Men's Association (eeep). A perfect suburb with an odd air of manufactured, automatic happiness.

I really want to tell you what happens in the end, but I won't, except that the men just end up looking really pathetic because you can't change the essence of a human being, no matter how hard you try, and if you love them, you shouldn't. A little tweak here and there is okay, because usually it's mutual, but trying to transform your partner, of whichever sex), into a standard factory model, however perfect, is just lame and boring and predictable, and shows how shallow and insecure you can be.

I saw it with my mom, and it was amazing that the movie reflected every single lesson she's ever tried to teach me about men, which I've never been able to buy, because, well, I seem to give them more credit than they deserve! (Sorry guys, maybe I'm not being fair, but I'll be more than happy to be proved wrong in general). My mom has always tried to tell me to be subdued, because men are afraid of aggression, whether real or apparent, particularly when it takes on a sexual dimension, that men's egos are really fragile, and they don't like their women to come across as doing better than them, even if they are. Therefore they expect a wife, who, though she makes immensely important decisions at work, to forget it all and come home and be submissive. I guess this universal and eternal sociological phenomenon has created in men the propensity to like dumb blonde types, and for women to marry rich and smart. (So neither will be insecure. Which actually makes us wonder what happens to rich smart hot women, like that NY Times article and my musings in this confused post. Piece of shit NYTIMES... you can't read the article because it's cleverly archived and you have to pay for it! Excellent article though.)

One Hindi movie that explored this vaguely was Dil Vil Pyar Vyar, which I actually liked. Madhavan and Namrata Shirodkar are a couple who are in the music industry... and as Namrata becomes a more and more successful (and therefore busier) singer, she doesn't have the time to do elaborate romantic things for her husband anymore. He feels left out and angry and takes it out on her. I realise that couples have expectations of each other that are relatively equal in weight - if a man is the primary breadwinner and the wife works part-time or is a housewife, it is understandable that she expect him to earn enough to support them, and he expect an organised home and to be cared for when he returns. The complexity sets in when both sexes contribute equally to the income. Then how is housework and childcare to be divided? Then how is affection to be displayed? If the way to a man's heart is through his stomach (and I'm in big trouble if this is the case with the man I'll eventually end up with), which is how most women show their affection (a Gujju newspaper joked that this affection of women to feed them sweets and fried snacks is what kills their husbands), how is a woman to manage?

And when men (okay I'll be fair) and women, get frustrated with their lives and each other, instead of talking about it, exploring their issues together in an amicable fashion, and not trying to prove each other wrong, they start having affairs. The men, with someone way younger and prettier (TRUST ME, THEY'RE WITH YOU FOR THE MONEY/POWER/PRESTIGE, NOT BECAUSE THEY REALLY LOVE YOU, SO DON'T FOOL YOURSELF), and the women, probably usually just too tired and frustrated and made old and haggard by the tension and worried about the kids to fuck (but you know, i suppose that after a point in a marriage, a fuck really is just a fuck and not a big deal involving emotions that we make it out to be when we're young. I may be wrong, given my evident lack of age and experience in the field, but I think that most people in a marriage who have affairs are really unlikely to leave their spouses unless they're really miserable, particularly if they just want some variety, because the comfort/familiarity/habitude that exists and has been built up over a long, arduous period of time, and seems too much of a waste of effort and pain to lose over simply a couple of nights here and there. So this movie really explores an idealistic option, which still shows men in a really negative light no matter which way you see it. And it was a little simplistic for a kiss to make all the difference. Do men really care after a point if their wife means it when she says I love you? Or is it okay as long as she fulfils some socially accepted role of acting like she loves you because she's fulfilling her wifely role?

It reinforced the belief that men don't WANT their wives to be better than them, but to be better FOR them while they remain fat farts. Trust me boys, we all have similar notions of an ideal world! (Except we don't mind being thin as long as it involves minimum exercise and calorieless delightful chocolatey desserts).

See it see it see it! Oops, watch it watch it watch it!