Relationships from the POV of Hollywood films.
It’s Valentine’s Day. A holiday I hate. Invented to sell more cards and overcharge people for a rushed dinner.
It would be great to blame men for this and maybe at the very beginning they started it. (Valentine’s day does go back many, many centuries.) But it’s actually a woman, who never married herself (oh, the irony) who started pushing it to be the popular holiday it has become. In 1850, Esther Howland, the daughter of a successful and wealthy stationer started the first mass-produced Valentine’s Day card business in the U.S. This all exploded in the 20th century when Hallmark decided to take it to new heights of capitalistic success.
This, piled on with Hollywood’s view of what it means to be a successful woman, has shaped the way women think of success and look at the importance of relationships.
I grew up watching Hollywood films. Lots of romantic comedies, lots of female role models who always needed to find a man. They may have had jobs, they may have been wealthy, but they needed a man to be happy.
I definitely think this affected my point of view about being a success until I had an epiphany.
Years ago, in my mid-20s, not sure what I wanted to do with my life, instead of doing what a lot of men did at the time and focus on myself, I would look outward for answers and then give it up and then do it again. Yes, for a few months every year, I’d focus on meeting someone…someone to be serious with. And then I’d get fed up and give it up. This was a repetitive cycle. Just going around in circles, always coming back to the feeling that if I met that certain someone it would all fall into place and yet sort of being repulsed by the prospect of relying on anyone else and ultimately abandoning the idea that finding someone to “settle down with” would fix my life.
Literally, one day, I just woke up and thought to hell with it. I decided if it wasn’t in the cards and I didn’t know if I even wanted the cards, I should just let that go and start my life with a different focus. ME. I got a new apartment, I got a new job and I started making films. I’ve been much happier ever since.
But why? Why did this happen? Was it my upbringing? Well, sort of, but I can’t say it was from my parents, at least not most of it. Sure, they read me fairy tales where the man saves the woman from her horrible suffering life and that fixed everything. Okay, true. But that was when I was very young. It was Hollywood that really solidified that feeling that finding a man fixes everything even though at my core, that felt wrong. One romantic comedy after another, whether wealthy or poor, the women in them needed to find a man to be happy and feel successful and realize money didn’t matter. Having a man and birthing out babies…well, that fixes everything. Right? Wrong. Even in science fiction films and thriller movies, the man saved the woman and in the end and they realized though they bickered throughout the film, they loved each other.
There are exceptions to this and more and more Hollywood is making films where women do not need to wind up with a man at the end but we still have a long way to go. I invite you to keep an eye out for this as you watch movies. It’s not wrong to show romance and finding happiness in love, but it is wrong when it is pushed subliminally as the best solution for all your problems. I suggest we each ensure we consciously see that’s what’s happening. Then we can each can enjoy these sort of films knowing they are not science fiction or romantic comedies, but pure imagination and fantasy. Nothing wrong with that if you are letting your brain know it’s just for fun and not let it shape the way you lead your life.
Look at films and notice that men can LOOK over 40 and be single, but the women in those films who are single have to LOOK under 35 or be the weird, quirky person who just obviously isn’t entitled to that sort of happiness and can live with cats and “settle” for that.
It’s kind of funny once you start noticing it. So get that highly salted popcorn with the fake butter. You are in for an entertaining treat when you know what to look for and then yes, you can still sigh when they kiss at the end…then laugh at yourself. :-)