A friend and I stole a few kid-free hours today and went to see Julie and Julia. I enjoyed it for the butter-worship and the humour and Meryl Streep. It made me hungry and giggly and not even a teensy bit angry. Result!
On reflection, I think I liked this film so much because it let me relax (not just because I was sans Bean, although that helps). It was because it didn’t demand of me that I put aside kneejerk principled reaction in order to enjoy the experience. There was nothing for this humourless feminist to get shirty about.
For once, it was a mainstream film for women and about women where the bulk of the dialogue had nothing to do with men, romance or weddings. Both Julie and Julia were characters who did things and were interested in more than their apparent desirablity to others. Sure they both spend most of their time in the kitchen – but they want to be there. Nice.
But I think, more than this, what I liked about the film was the abscence of misogyny. Sounds kind of silly to say it so plainly but the fact is that even in the chick flick genre, overt misogyny is rife right now. An obvious example would be the execrable The Ugly Truth, where the leading man is meant to be appealing because he’s not quite as bad as a guy who laughs at his own rape jokes on live television. Perhaps that film is an extreme example – but even when the lead actor plays a basically nice guy, he usually has at least one douchebag friend with a porn addiction or a tendency to ask inappropriate questions about the female lead’s anatomy. In other words, they find some way to insert a good dose of objectification into the script. For laughs. Because that stuff is so funny.
Somehow, Nora Ephron and her Julie and Julia team have managed to make a chick flick without any arseholes. The male leads in Julie and Julia are genuinely nice guys who love and support their wives, enjoy having consensual and mutually pleasurable sex with them, show affection and concern when appropriate, and delight in their partners’ successes.
Feminists are so often accused of being man-haters but the simple truth is that many of us adore men. Certain men. And the irony is that it is misogyny and bigotry which paints men in a bad light: The Ugly Truth (and countless films and TV shows just like it) suggests that all men are nothing but two-dimensional neanderthals incapable of real connection and love because of the incapacitating effect of their sex-driven decision making. They put forward a view of masculinity that is not only limited to hetero-and-macho, but is also deeply flawed and frankly, unlikable.
On the other hand, as a feminist, I expect more from men than the cookie-cutter mold of sexist gender stereotyping generally allows. I know that men can be caring. Intelligent. Diverse. Multi-dimensional. Capable of restraint and also passion.
And respectful.
It took me a while to realise that one of the things I liked most about Julie and Julia was actually the husbands (particularly Stanley Tucci’s beguiling portrayal of Paul Child). My friend and I certainly didn’t chat much about them in our post-film debrief. But perhaps, after all, that was as it should be. To us there was nothing remarkable about those characters - we were going home to men who love and value us and treat us with respect.
I wish it were the same for all straight, partnered women.
And I wish it weren’t such a novelty to go to the cinema to watch a bit of froth without coming out frothing at the mouth.


