SMART WOMEN: MUZZLED

Who is Shaping Your Self-Image?

Last night I watched a DVD called Mona Lisa Smile with Julia Roberts. I didn't see it when it was in the theater because it got such a terrible reviews. Now I understand why.

Mona Lisa Smile is not your standard "women's movie" or "chick flick." The women don't kill themselves, have abortions, get raped or seek violent revenge on some dog of a guy. In fact, when a newlywed finds herself being cheated on by her new husband of barely a month, she divorces him (something seldom done back then) - much to the chagrin of her mother, who would have preferred that her daughter "make an arrangement" and live with the infidelity.

Mona Lisa Smile's characters are students at a prestigious women's college in 1953. The catalyst is an independent-thinking new teacher who challenges her programmed-to-be-wives students to think independently and be strong. She wasn't well-liked by the faculty...Cheez, what a surprise...

For a historical perspective, 1953 was a time when most women didn't go to college. The well-to-do sent their daughters to college so they would be better prepared to be good wives (thus references to degrees being called an "MRS" degree). If they didn't go to college, they went to finishing school - I'm guessing it was to finish off any non-subservient or non-submissive thoughts they might still have before marriage.

In college and finishing school, young women read books that would expand their minds so they could make better conversation at dinner parties. They learned etiquette and how to be socially adept. All of it so that they would be an asset to their husband's careers.

In contrast, the teacher in Mona Lisa Smile convinces one brilliant student to apply for law school and she gets accepted - early acceptance, no less. It upsets her fiance. An interesting conversation between the teacher and fiance show him thanking the teacher for what she did for his girlfriend. "She'll always have that," he says. When the teacher questions what he means, the fiance explains that he'll be in school in Philadelphia and how could his wife be at school in another state "and still have dinner on the table at five o'clock?"

The part of this movie that I find most striking is not the difference between today and 1953, but the similarities. While it's true that more women are attending college than men and getting married later, they seem to be facing the same challenges as their mothers and grandmothers. It seems that too many women still see themselves, college-educated or not, as secondary partners in marital relationships. So do the men.

Kathy and Toni, two of the women in my book, Victorious Woman! (www.victoriouswoman.com) didn't go to college because their fathers couldn't see the sense of it. After all, according to them, why have a college degree just to get married and have children.

More recently, an brilliant intern who worked with me for a while admitted that sometimes she "dumbs down" to get a guy to ask her out. Another intern told me that most of her friends plan to work a while, maybe even have a career, but quit when they have children because it's too hard to do both.

What we, as a society, seem not to want to learn is that being a strong women who can take care of herself leads to attracting a man who can work as a partner in a relationship. Interdependence between couples is key. It isn't something that our culture applauds or our media likes to focus on (because it doesn't sell product like diet aids).

However, as long as movies like If These Walls Could Talk (the highest watched HBO movie), Thelma and Louise, Waiting to Exhale (all about women as victims) and other, more recent movies continue to be the standard, and as long as a strong man is considered powerful while a strong woman is considered a bitch, I don't know that the paradigm will shift. And that, my friends, will be a shame for all of us - men, women and children.

What do you think?