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Legally Blonde and how it is awesome
Mar. 27th, 2010 07:47 pmI am doing that thing where you try writing the post you've been thinking about forever, in favor of not ever writing it. This post is about how Legally Blonde is a really wonderful feminist film. I've seen it many times and love this movie.
Starring Reese Witherspoon, Luke Wilson, Selma Blair. 2001.
Witherspoon plays Elle Woods, president of her sorority at CULA, looking forward to getting engaged to her boyfriend Warner Huntington III, and majoring in fashion design. Her plans change when Warner dumps her for "someone more serious" and she decides to follow him to Harvard Law School and win him back.
This movie is funny, delightful, and surprising at every turn. Just when you think, oh, horrible sexist film (based on the marketing or basic story), it turns out to be a clever feminist story with very witty writing and sharp performances. Elle makes mistakes but they are the kind of mistakes that give her a steely resolve. She expects to find friends in her peers at law school, who turn their noses down at her, so she instead finds friends and allies in places you might not expect, across age, class, and gender divisions. It passes the Bechdel test easily because it focuses on Elle's career, several female friendships, and her general struggles and triumphs; her relationships with men are secondary. And yet it also acknowledges the existence of sexism and sexual harassment: there is an incident at her job that nearly causes her to quit, her co-worker is also casually mistreated in this same workplace.
There are a couple of things I would change. There are not many people of color in this film, particularly at the law school or CULA. There are gay people in this film (I am happy to say), but they do play up the stereotypes pretty strongly for the sake of a plot point or a laugh. The story also falls into the Victorian trope of coming-of-age story in which the heroine must end up with a man at the end. Sure, it's a good man, a kind and respectful one, but still, can't Elle stand alone at the end? I would like the movie better if she did.
The main impression this movie has made on me as a feminist is that it celebrates someone is what we might call "high femme", who embraces everything pink, is really into fashion, shoes, makeup, and celebrity gossip magazines, who is conventionally attractive (and cares about looks), loves her sorority, and has a little dog she carries in her purse. My own coming-of-age journey, finding my own identity as a woman, has largely been about rejecting these things and making fun of them. I am not highly femme, I resisted and still resist a lot of markers of femininity, and with that resistance came a certain derision of those who chose to participate in them. Growing into adulthood as a woman and a feminist has been about reconsidering this stance and respecting other people's choices. And this is what the film does for me. Elle is serious, smart, and powerful. She is a strong woman, a sympathetic one, a relatable one. I identify with her and cheer for her even when I am mystified by her love of pink sparkles and sororities. She is unapologetically herself, and that is something I want to be. Be yourself. Own who you are.
There have been a couple of moments in my life that I call "Legally Blonde" moments, where I encounter some woman who is perhaps blonde, very beautiful, probably petite, probably very femininely dressed. And so I automatically discount her a little, think that she and I have nothing in common, classify her in my head as someone I am not interested in getting to know. And then later, I am surprised, because it turns out she's a scientist or something else I find really cool, and we have many things to talk about. There was one woman in school with me like this, who told us she'd been in a beauty competition before coming to grad school. I had that reaction. How can she be serious, if she'd been in a beauty pageant? But she was very serious and smart. Society trains us to discount things that are coded as feminine. It is one of the strange looping side effects of misogyny. Because sometimes women are into these things (and only rarely are men into these things), we therefore think they are unimportant, frivolous, beneath our attention, just like women themselves.
Starring Reese Witherspoon, Luke Wilson, Selma Blair. 2001.
Witherspoon plays Elle Woods, president of her sorority at CULA, looking forward to getting engaged to her boyfriend Warner Huntington III, and majoring in fashion design. Her plans change when Warner dumps her for "someone more serious" and she decides to follow him to Harvard Law School and win him back.
This movie is funny, delightful, and surprising at every turn. Just when you think, oh, horrible sexist film (based on the marketing or basic story), it turns out to be a clever feminist story with very witty writing and sharp performances. Elle makes mistakes but they are the kind of mistakes that give her a steely resolve. She expects to find friends in her peers at law school, who turn their noses down at her, so she instead finds friends and allies in places you might not expect, across age, class, and gender divisions. It passes the Bechdel test easily because it focuses on Elle's career, several female friendships, and her general struggles and triumphs; her relationships with men are secondary. And yet it also acknowledges the existence of sexism and sexual harassment: there is an incident at her job that nearly causes her to quit, her co-worker is also casually mistreated in this same workplace.
There are a couple of things I would change. There are not many people of color in this film, particularly at the law school or CULA. There are gay people in this film (I am happy to say), but they do play up the stereotypes pretty strongly for the sake of a plot point or a laugh. The story also falls into the Victorian trope of coming-of-age story in which the heroine must end up with a man at the end. Sure, it's a good man, a kind and respectful one, but still, can't Elle stand alone at the end? I would like the movie better if she did.
The main impression this movie has made on me as a feminist is that it celebrates someone is what we might call "high femme", who embraces everything pink, is really into fashion, shoes, makeup, and celebrity gossip magazines, who is conventionally attractive (and cares about looks), loves her sorority, and has a little dog she carries in her purse. My own coming-of-age journey, finding my own identity as a woman, has largely been about rejecting these things and making fun of them. I am not highly femme, I resisted and still resist a lot of markers of femininity, and with that resistance came a certain derision of those who chose to participate in them. Growing into adulthood as a woman and a feminist has been about reconsidering this stance and respecting other people's choices. And this is what the film does for me. Elle is serious, smart, and powerful. She is a strong woman, a sympathetic one, a relatable one. I identify with her and cheer for her even when I am mystified by her love of pink sparkles and sororities. She is unapologetically herself, and that is something I want to be. Be yourself. Own who you are.
There have been a couple of moments in my life that I call "Legally Blonde" moments, where I encounter some woman who is perhaps blonde, very beautiful, probably petite, probably very femininely dressed. And so I automatically discount her a little, think that she and I have nothing in common, classify her in my head as someone I am not interested in getting to know. And then later, I am surprised, because it turns out she's a scientist or something else I find really cool, and we have many things to talk about. There was one woman in school with me like this, who told us she'd been in a beauty competition before coming to grad school. I had that reaction. How can she be serious, if she'd been in a beauty pageant? But she was very serious and smart. Society trains us to discount things that are coded as feminine. It is one of the strange looping side effects of misogyny. Because sometimes women are into these things (and only rarely are men into these things), we therefore think they are unimportant, frivolous, beneath our attention, just like women themselves.
