Review: Bride Wars

Having enjoyed watching and writing about Legally Blonde so much, I thought I'd follow up by writing about Bride Wars, which I watched last night with my long-suffering partner.

When I came home to house sit for a couple of weeks, I told my sister, who lives fairly close by, that I wanted all the happy girly films that she possessed. It took a while, because hey, my sister, but she came up trumps in the end with a healthy pile of boxes. She'd located some classics like Bridget Jones's Diary, some old favourites like Very Annie Mary and Bend It Like Beckham, some animations that she thought would fit the bill (Madagascar 1 and 2), and a couple of pink boxes that were unknown to me, one of which went straight to the bottom of the pile. No offense, I told my sister, and thanks for taking the time to think of stuff I hadn't asked for, but my criteria were pickier than I may have led her to believe. It wasn't good enough for a film to simply have more than one woman in it, or speak to issues that women are interested in (all caveats in place, as ever, of course). It wasn't enough for there to be lunches rather than explosions, relationships rather than car chases, shopping rather than video games. In fact, I told her, I would be happy to watch a film full of nothing but explosions, car chases and video games, as long as there are some women in it who are nice to each other.

That's the magic, crucial ingredient that I'm looking for in my films, particularly at the moment. I mean, I'm happy to watch films without this element, and I'll probably still enjoy them. Recently I've seen and enjoyed Zoolander and Lord of the Rings, which have about four female characters between them, none of whom even speak to each, let alone are nice to each other. The films were fine, and there's plenty to like about each of them, but they don't work for me on that base emotional level that I'm seeking out at the moment. However, while that kind of film - the kind that doesn't even have enough female characters to make a conversation between them possible - is annoying, I find them far more enjoyable than the ones where the women are unpleasant to each other. You know the ones I mean - films where the woman-woman interactions happen between a girlfriend and an ex-girlfriend, or a mother and her son's wife, or a man's fiancee and his best female friend. Those films routinely centre men, and the women who revolve around him are just-as-routinely bitchy, competitive, frivolous and jealous of each other. The two archetypes are 1) nice, normal woman and 2) beautiful bitch. There are so many versions of this it makes my brain hurt. Perhaps sometime I'll write up a nice long list! For now, though, suffice to say that I do not like this kind of film, and that they are legion.

So when I saw Bride Wars on the pile, I baulked. I saw the picture on the front, of two beautiful women glaring at each other, cake slices crossed like swords. I vaguely remembered the trailers, recalling a confused mix of competition, jealousy, cruelty, and a friendship sacrificed at the altar of marriage. I knew I wasn't up for it. I knew these women would not be kind to each other. So why did I end up watching it? I wanted something that I hadn't seen before, something lighthearted, something that would have a happy ending. It would have a happy ending, right? They would make up. Plus, my sister had brought it for me to watch. I had told her my reservations, and she had said that it was better than it looked. I didn't want to reject either her DVD or her reassurances. So we made dinner, closed the curtains, and I mentally lined up antidotes to watch afterwards, in case Bride Wars was exactly what I feared it would be.

And then it wasn't.

There were some heinous moments, for sure. There was fat hatred and slut shaming and heterosexism and, criminally, about 7 non-white actors in total - including crowd scenes - only 2 of whom spoke. This is not a fault-free film by any means, and my intention is not to pretend otherwise, or to pretend that these things don't matter because of the things I liked about it. However, I did like some things about it, much as my little bingo-card of bad filled up worryingly fast.

The plot did have some of the nastiness that I expected. Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway - Liv and Emma - are best friends their whole lives. They dream of the same perfect wedding at the Plaza hotel, with the same guests, bands, place settings etc - and with each other as their maids of honour. This all falls apart when their bookings are mishandled and it turns out that only one of them can get married on their chosen date. The other one can either book the Plaza's next available date, three years in the future, choose another venue, or get married in different rooms of the Plaza on the same day, at the same time (let's overlook the ridiculous implausibility of this scenario. We need to pit bride against bride somehow, and DAMMIT this is the best we could come up with). This is where things start to go wrong, as each woman thinks that the other should step aside and choose another venue - or perhaps wait three years to get married. Neither woman is willing to sacrifice her perfect wedding, or its immediacy, for her friend. There follows the main meat of the film, in which the two women fight over every wedding-related commodity, try to divide their mutual friends, and attempt to sabotage the wedding of their ex-best friend.

This, of course, is where the truly nasty stuff happens (apart from the ongoing whitewashing and heterosexism, of course). The two women become cruel, denigrating each other's appearances, exploiting each other's past troubles for their own gain, and generally doing anything they can think of to improve their own wedding and ruin their rival's. I didn't enjoy that in principle, and I definitely didn't enjoy the tropes that they were reduced to in pursuit of their goal. Emma, revealing that Liv used to be overweight, tricks Liv into eating fatty snacks so that she gets 'fat' and can't fit into her wedding dress. Liv sabotages Emma's tanning booth, turning Emma bright orange. Emma replaces Liv's blonde hair dye with blue, with the eventual consequence of Liv embarrassing herself at work and being demoted. 

They do make up in the end, of course. They also, to their credit, don't descend into dreadful behaviour without twinges of conscience and attempts to reconcile. They each try to get in touch with the other, but due to the special magic of rom-coms (that same magic that drives every Friends episode ever), wires are crossed and opportunities are missed, leaving each woman certain that the other is entirely uninterested in reconciliation or compromise. They eventually make up at the last possible second, only after Emma has snapped and physically attacked Liv as she walks down the aisle. After they've rolled around on the floor for a bit, they instantly forgive each other (because reasons) and Emma walks Liv down the aisle to get married.

It seems irreparable, the damage that this film does to women, to brides, to female friendships and relationships of any gender. And, honestly, I'm not sure that its ending makes up the difference. Having said that, I was won over by the narrator's closing message, as trite as it sounds: 

"Sometimes in life there really are bonds formed that can never be broken. Sometimes you really can find that one person who will stand by you no matter what; maybe you’ll find it in a spouse and celebrate it with your dream wedding, but there is also the chance that the one person you can count on for a lifetime, the one person who knows you, sometimes better than you know yourself, is the same person who's been standing beside you all along."

Perhaps it doesn't sound like much, but I was struck by the rarity of the notion that a relationship with a friend can be as important as a romantic relationship. Sure, you could find that bond with a spouse, but you could also find what sounds very much like a soulmate in a platonic friendship. (Incidentally, the gender of that friendship - or spouse - isn't specified, which I appreciate.) Isn't that unusual? Few films think to question the validity of the ultimate goal of a stable relationship; still fewer chick flicks/rom coms do. And yet here is a miserable excuse of a a chick flick, in which women 'hilariously' lose any semblance of humanity in a humiliating struggle to have the best wedding, trampling over loyalty and love on the way, which ends up celebrating the bonds of friendship over those of matrimony.

Not convinced? Emma doesn't end up with the guy she gets engaged to at the beginning of the film. When Liv's brother was introduced to the plot, I saw the telltale signs of a potential romantic interest, but I dismissed it because I assumed that this film couldn't possibly engage an extra source of drama. The fiancés must remain stable, because the catty women fighting over their weddings are the problem, not their patient, long-suffering partners. To have one of the relationships fail would be to introduce some complexity beyond the notion that bitches be crazy, and I just couldn't imagine it. The fact that the film actually goes with the idea that one of the men could be less than perfect in addition to the less-than-perfect women adds a touch of much needed complexity to the plot and, more importantly, highlights the significance of the women's platonic bond over the inter-gender romantic bonds. Obviously it's not exactly groundbreaking for a woman to begin a film with one guy, discover that he is wrong for her, and end up driving into the sunset with a more suitable guy. And it's way less daring than it could have been if, for example, Emma ended up (gasp!) single. But it's a nice touch, I think, especially as it foregrounds the importance of Emma and Lil's relationship, which is the one that survives and is truly celebrated.

So to sum up: Bride Wars is not a good film! It is reductive and insulting, it is incredibly white and boringly heterosexist, and the performances leave plenty to be desired. And it did indeed feature women being pretty nasty to each other because weddings are the most important thing in the world. Having said all that, the celebration of platonic friendship was truly refreshing, and it left me feeling uplifted despite the overarching banality of the film.

Consent

This post is personal and has no great revelations about life or love. It's not even about gender! Well, I suppose gender comes into it a bit. Sneaky little thing gets everywhere! It's about unwanted intercourse, and me, and an unpleasant episode with a partner. Please be aware it gets a bit brutal, and click past this post right now if you're not up for it. If you are, read on ...




I liked intercourse, once, but I often found it painful. Whether that's due to a physical issue or a mental one, I don't know. It was frustrating for me, of course, and some of my partners found it extremely difficult to deal with. I had a turbulent eight-month relationship with one such person, who made a good show - for the most part - of being accepting and tolerant, and generally acting as though this was reasonable behaviour on my part. He was patient and kind, taking his time with 'foreplay', as I'd told him that this was helpful for me.

Once I suggested that we focus more on the non-penetrative aspects of sex, since I found these parts pleasurable, and would be able to relax into them more if I wasn't worried about how the penetration would feel when we got to it. He wasn't terribly keen on the idea, as for him the most enjoyable part of sex was the intercourse itself, and he didn't really see the point, he told me, of sex which didn't end in intercourse. I couldn't orgasm with him - I never had - and he thought this made foreplay even more pointless. Nevertheless, he wanted to make me happy, and he genuinely wanted me to enjoy sex, so we agreed to shelve penetration for a little while and see how it went.

I was practically living with him at this point. My room on the other side of London was cold, bare and lonely, and it was much nicer to spend time with A in his cosy flat. He had to get up early in the mornings to commute to the opposite corner of London for work, so it was easy for me to go partway with him and be at college for a 9am start. We had settled quickly into a routine - mundane and domestic but cosy and comforting at the same time. We argued about the washing up, but we shopped and cooked and decorated together, and were happy. I was 19.

We 'foreplayed' for a while after that, kissing and touching and stroking and sucking. I tried to enjoy it as I'd said that I would. I tried to relax, like the books said I should. I wanted to make A happy, to let him see me enjoying myself. I wanted to enjoy myself. I started pretended to, hoping to trick myself into feeling pleasure. It didn't work on me, but it worked on A, who read in my responses only what he wanted to read, and moved to penetrate me. I was tense and confused, paralysed with shame and guilt and fear. If there was something wrong with me, this wasn't the way to fix it. What was? How could I find out? Not like this ... a problem for another time, then. I moved to accommodate him and tried to relax my muscles and my mind.

We fucked.

I moved as much as I dared, trying to tread the fine line between stillness and movement that didn't make me an inert lump of meat, but didn't hurt too much either. He pushed his face into my shoulder, kissing my collarbone, his fingers on my nipple. I closed my eyes to stop the tears. I retreated from the pain and my eyes dried, my mind emptied. I watched him from somewhere else, trying to smile at him, thinking maybe this isn't so bad. I can do this. Look how easy it is.

Lying together afterwards, damp and clammy, somewhere between relieved, resigned and resentful, I realised I had to tell him the truth about 'how it was for me'. I apologised a lot. I thanked him for trying the foreplay thing. I apologised again if I'd given him the wrong signals. I told him I hadn't enjoyed it. I asked him if he'd seen my tears. I told him it was my fault for not asking him to stop. I said sorry.

His mouth tightened then, and he pulled away, and shouted into my face that I'd made him rape me. After a while I started crying, and he held me and soothed me, murmuring into my ear and stroking my back. I quieted.

We had dinner.

Later, he cried, and held his face in his hands, and I looked at him as if he was my child, thinking I must protect him from this. 




I said at the top that gender didn't come into this one. It doesn't, really, except that as I wrote that I thought about all the ways that gender had influenced this particular incident, as well as sex more generally. Had I not been socialised as a woman, would I have been more vocal about what I wanted and didn't want, like A was? Perhaps I wouldn't have internalised so many damaging 'truths' about sex: intercourse is the only bit that matters; I should want intercourse because if I didn't I was a prude, I was broken; foreplay is something that happens before intercourse, as a warmup, and if I wanted it to last longer than it did I was selfish and immature and not doing it right; intercourse is something that I owed my partner. Perhaps if A and I had had different sex education (not just formal education but social education, a casual on-the-job learning with our peers and partners) he wouldn't have set so much store by intercourse, and nor would I, and both of us would have thought that there was value in exploring other aspects of sex. That one isn't so much about gender, but so much of it comes down to gender in the end, at a root level. A was older than I, but he probably had the same experience of being separated from 'the other' gender at school to learn about sex, to gigglingly observe condoms and bananas and cold line drawings of female anatomy. He was probably taught, as I was, that I was the possessor of untold riches and that he would get them if he only behaved in the right way, and that this was normal. He was probably taught, as I was, that if the carefully applied formula didn't work, it meant that one or other of us must be broken, and since he wasn't broken, it must be me. And he probably would have agreed with me that he needed to be protected from my brokenness. I think, in the end, he would rather not have known at all.

Casual Honesty

During a casual date a few weeks ago, I screwed up my courage for an awkward conversation. I knew it needed to be said, and I knew I had to be the one to start the conversation, so I did. I told T that I really liked her and enjoyed spending time together, but that I wasn't sure that I was attracted to her. I said that didn't mean that I wouldn't be in the future (since I'm a slow-burning lad and my romantic/sexual feelings tend to develop over a long period of knowing someone (and yes, that has caused all sorts of problems in my life!)), but that right now I wasn't feeling it and didn't know if I would at all. I told her that I wanted to make my feelings clear, so that we would both know where we stood if we decided to meet again.

Now, my motivations were clear in my head. I like T, I think she's huge fun, great company, right on my wave length politically, and hilarious with it. I want to see her again. But we had met originally through OKCupid, where we were both looking for, amongst other things, romantic dates and casual sex. And something she said after the first time we met had made me think that she liked me 'in that way'. So I wanted, for both our sakes, to be totally honest about how I felt, so that if we decided to meet again, she wouldn't be disappointed if we didn't get romantic or sexual, and I wouldn't be worried that she'd be disappointed if we didn't get romantic or sexual!

T's response was unexpected but pleasing: she told me that she felt the same; that she wasn't sure if she was romantically or sexually interested in me, but enjoyed hanging out just the same. So the awkward conversation wasn't awkward after all - I was quite happy to believe that I had misread the situation and that T and I were cool to keep seeing each other, with no pressure on either side, and nobody would be disappointed if we remained non-romantic or -sexual. I think we're both happy with that - I met her earlier this week, as a matter of fact, and we had a lovely time chilling in the sun on the South Bank.

However, this situation has made me think about the generalities of casual dating, and the thin ice of 'honest' conversations in these contexts. I thought I was doing the responsible thing by making my intentions (such as they are) clear - I don't like stringing anyone along, and I hate the idea of unintentionally hurting someone by doing it by mistake. So, what's the solution? Tell people what you're thinking. Guilt-free dating, and nobody gets hurt. But flip that coin over, and what have you got? A selfish desire to have your cake and eat it too.

Bear with me. How can honesty be selfish? Here's how: by telling T that I like her, but don't like her, I am giving her a bald choice. I am laying down the law. "We can still see each other, but don't cross the line. The line is here - if you want to see me again, this is what you do." To me this sounds like pressure - pressure of the kind that I was, ironically, trying to avoid by being honest. Because, really, if T is interested, how can she respond to that? "I do fancy you, actually, but I guess we'll continue meeting up as friends and I'll keep my fingers crossed that you develop sexy feelings for me." Not such an easy thing to say, is it? Not if you're interested in keeping that casual vibe, or if you in turn don't want to put pressure on your date. Plus, come on, there's probably some embarrassment here. We're all very cool, very grown-up, and look at us talking about our feelings! - but there's a nervous kid in all of us, scared to put ourselves out there too much in case we're smacked down. Really, T would have to be super brave to respond to my 'I'm not interested' with 'I am interested'. So what I've done is force from T the only possible response to my declaration, regardless of how she actually feels. If she truly isn't interested, or isn't yet interested but thinks she might be in the future - great. If, on the other hand, she thinks she's interested, what I've done by making her aware of my lack of interest is ensured that she can't be honest about it. By telling her the truth, I can retain my 'casual, relaxed date' approach with impunity, having eased my conscience by 'being honest', but not actually risked hearing anything that I don't want to hear. See? Selfish.

The merit of demystification is a subject deeply entangled in progressive dating. I am in favour of honesty - all honesty all the time. But, alongside the various ethical questions that surround this approach (should I tell my friend I think their beard isn't doing them any favours, should I tell my boyfriend that I fancy his friend, should I tell my partner the details of my sex with other people etc) there is also a question about the romance of it. This comes up a lot in consent debates, too - is taking a 'plain speech' approach to consent sexy? (my answer: it can be, it depends on how you do it, and it sure beats the alternative whether it's sexy or not!) When it comes to casual dating, perhaps there's an optimum level of honesty, somewhere between coy glances, mind games and putting your hand in a strategic position hoping that they will take it, and "I fancy you, some sex would be great, can I put a date in my diary for our first kiss?"

In all seriousness, though, I don't know how casual this casual dating thing can be. I do like a bit of mystery - do they like me? what did they mean by that text? are they going to kiss me? - but at the same time, I feel we owe it to each other to be as gentle as possible, and sometimes that's going to mean making clear your feelings before somebody gets hurt.

Valentine

Three years ago I was bought dinner, new headphones, chocolates and a bottle of Laphroaig on Valentine's Day. I tried so hard to like that person. I still feel bad for not liking them as much as they liked me.

This year I am not being bought anything at all, and I don't have to try to like hir - I just do.

I am thankful for that, if not for this silly holiday.