It’s Very Complicated
January 30, 2010
by Risa A. Levine
|The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
Everyone (starting with my mother) is raving about the new Meryl Streep/Alec Baldwin manifesto for baby boomer women. Yes, the successful, enviably glowing, older woman can score the overweight, bumbling, self indulgent, needy boy-man back from the sexy, bitchy, young bombshell. Wow, what a step forward for women in a post-feminist age!
No, not really. It is not only socially acceptable for men to trade up with a much younger woman for their Act II, it is the Holy Grail. And yes, it’s something that every 
aging woman fears and resents when it happens. The attraction of It’s Complicated for the approaching-menopause-and-older group is that it reveals the other side of the deal for the guy: man gets hot, nubile young beauty, but she’s a little spoiled, and wants a family. Wow, I’m shocked! Sadly, this is just another story where one woman’s victory comes at the expense of another woman’s loss. Essentially, the same story as 1987’s Fatal Attraction: woman gets needy, man cheats, woman pays the price. The only twist here is that the mistress gets the guy (and then gets to dump him), not the wife. But still, it’s a girl-on-girl battle. Is that really progress?
The film skirts around the increasing awareness that waning fertility is a fact of 21st Century life – even for women (and men) in their thirties (and twenties). Pollution, food additives including hormones and antibiotics, stress factors, diseases, all of it has taken a toll on men’s and women’s bodies and now procreation is not just about a night of passion on 600 thread count sheets. It’s about stirrups, injections, petri dishes and invasive ultra sound probes. And hormones, lots of hormones. So when the woman gets a little cranky, it’s really not ok for her husband to run out and find refuge in the arms of another woman, even if she’s an AARP member and has cellulite. Getting the man on the altar of another woman’s pain is not a big score for women’s emancipation. That’s still just a cheating husband who has failed to man-up and live with the deal he made when he asked the hot chic to marry him. And as women, we should not be cheering this misogynist behavior.
We know Nancy Meyers can do it better: she did it in Something’s Gotta Give. There, the ladies worked it out and the older woman gets the guy, without having to destroy the younger woman. And it was a great movie. I just don’t get why she had to revert to the age war in this movie.
So, while I laughed along with the rest of the audience at Alec’s foibles, and cheered on the ever-captivating Meryl Streep, I suffered the pain of the hog-snoockered Bigger Better Deal Second Wife, who wasn’t getting such a good deal after all.
“Getting the man on the altar of another woman’s pain is not a big score for women’s emancipation. That’s still just a cheating husband who has failed to man-up and live with the deal he made when he asked the hot chic to marry him.”
Is there a way to write a story like this, which reveals how these stories fail to truly empower women?
Why couldn’t the first wife in the movie have captured the interest of a younger attractive successful man….and have it work out? Maybe then I would go and see the movie.
I think the problem is no one has accepted that women’s content is content women will pay to consume. There is no other relevant definition. It is not what ever men say it is and it is not whatever feminists say it should be. Media companies need to use more female writers and more female directors. So far in media all decisions are made by men and when women do get a turn it is the women who ape male behavior to get ahead who get the chance to sell a script or make a movie. “Women’s Content” has not evolved for a very long time. Once some women are free to create I think it will leap light years ahead of where it has been. If I were trying to make money from women’s media I would have a board of young women from respected high schools and I would pick their brains for what they want to see.
I actually think this movie depicts what a mistake it is for younger woman to marry men far older than they are. I don’t feel sorry for the man, but the woman is not a victim either. On the other hand, I watched this movie for the entertainment value, not to break it down and analyze it. It was funny. Anything with Meryl Streep in it is worth watching. And she’s no door mat. She is a feminist, to be sure.
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