How feminist views change as you get older

[Michelleoftheresistance]

Or films that make you go hmm....

I remember being shown several key women's films while I was doing A levels and at university, in one case studying women writers. Shirley Valentine was one, Educating Rita was another. I got the general key messages at the time: women trying to escape the stereotypes to be more, to be allowed to be themselves, to seek their own fulfilment instead of someone else's, the unfairness of societal roles.

I saw Educating Rita again a few days ago, not having seen it in decades, and it was like watching a completely different film. For a start, when I first saw it as a teenager, I saw Rita as a mature student, an adult much older than me, where I watch it now and think she's early twenties, she's so young and there's vulnerability there I hadn't seen.

But the key message of that film for me watching it now is a triangle of incompetent males who were certain they could be happy if they could force Rita to be who they wanted. Her abusive father, her horrible husband, the creepy professor. All males, incapable of taking responsibility for themselves or their problems, trying to compel a woman to turn herself in to what they needed to fix them, and punishing her when she didn't do it right or it didn't work, or she dared to have boundaries.

Totally different insights. And don't get me started on My Fair Lady....

Has anyone else found their perspectives have shifted radically with different stages in their lives?

Joey from Friends. All the "How you doin?", sleeping with women and not calling them, lying to them on dates, the way he treats his sisters like they're stupid - eg telling his sister she can't look after a baby and orders her to have an abortion!

When I was younger, I remember thinking he was sweet and charming! Now I just think he's such a letch. Such a perve 🤣

Tootsie, ah yes.

I've mentioned this before that I recall Dustin Hoffman being a tad disappointed, he expected to look more attractive in make up than he actually was.
That sentence startled me because it just shows how men think women can be 'hot' if only they tried harder.
He apparently sympathised with women after that.

Men are so dense sometimes.

Dont get me wrong I thought American Pie was funny but I just think the film crew are having a laugh at the expense of naive girls. I thought this back then, turns out that icky feeling I had was right.

Agree with @Gwynfluff. For an embarrassingly long time I thought if I wanted to be a feminist I had to be a liberal feminist but that has definitely changed and I find myself agreeing with Dworkin more and more.

Interesting point about films of the 1930s and 40s being less problematic - certainly true when compared to the 1980s and 90s.

I was watching an episode of Top Of The Pops the other day where they showed the best clips of girl bands throughout the years. The performances particularly from the early 2000's - Pussycat Dolls and Girls Aloud - were sexualised like you wouldn't believe. Presented in the skimpiest outfits with loads of leg and boob showing. Like little dollies. Absolutely shocking! I would have been in my teens when those girl bands were around and don't remember batting an eyelid at the time.

Absolutely OP. I did not see any of the misogyny in those films growing up! Loved Grease, loved Indiana Jones, etc. Now, I just can't watch films like Pretty Woman without feeling a bit disgusted and angry about the lie it perpetuates.
Reflecting back, although I grew up without my Mum being at all political in her views, she set me some good examples around hard work and self confidence, but also less fortunately around how damaging men can be. My father is not a nice person, but thinks he is.
My own DD is much more perceptive and aware of things than I was at her age. We recently watched the Breakfast Club together. A film I haven't watched in years. She was appalled by it! The casual rape humour, the inexplicable pairing off of the characters at the end. She thought it was awful.

I was only 8 when Grease came out, and even at that age I didn't understand why we were celebrating that the young woman was changing who she is to keep her man. Maybe I was too young to be hormonally approving 😆

I have always been confused by the morality of fairy tales, too - always felt sorry for the bears, not Goldilocks, and the Giant rather than Jack.

But yes - my radicalisation as a feminist directly relates to parenthood, trying to raise good men and women of the future in a sexist culture - and to the impact of parenthood on my career.

My father is not a nice person, but thinks he is

That must be difficult for you to navigate around.

did not see any of the misogyny in those films growing up! Loved Grease, loved Indiana Jones, etc. Now, I just can't watch films like Pretty Woman without feeling a bit disgusted and angry about the lie it perpetuates.

Once you see the patriarchal intent and heteronormativity - hard to unsee it.

But I reserve my ‘boy shit’ label for the stuff that is meant to be definitive of the cultural discourse but actually is usually a completely male and often patriarchal view with lashings of misogyny thrown in or at other points, actually just very mediocre as an example of the cultural form. It includes everything from Monty Python, to the classic tails of male alienation that are meant to be deep and meaningful to stuff like the Hobbit!

Funny how many of us had these outraged thoughts in our head back then but kept them suppressed until much older.

Nobody wanted to be like Mary Whitehouse.

I realise now Mary may have been subjected to a terrible character assassination by those same types of people who are trying to blur boundaries ever since.

Thankyou for this thread, its piqued my interest, I'll look her up.

I still think that Educating Rita is wonderful. I remember when it came out and I was in High School and it so beautifully captured my life. I really wish I kept a diary of the many times I have watched it and the different things I have got from it. Remember that it is about social class as well as sex. For me, the most poignant features are about class. I love watching Rita's journey - her sheer love of learning and the world that was opening up for her and then realising that so many elements of this world were fake - and her calling out Frank on his vicarious using of her and her journey to reignite his fantasies about academia. I also thought that Frank, beneath it all, was generous to her. Somewhere in my watching of it I switched to identifying with Frank as the jaded academic looking for those students who have real spark, thirst and talent and I remind myself that it is their journey and not mine as I teach them. I think you are denying Rita agency OP - she wasn't a pawn of men, she was a woman who actively shaped her world. If she had fucked Frank instead of cutting his hair and gone with him to Australia I'd be totally agreeing with you, but she didn't.

Another similar film is 'Bend it Like Beckham' - I love the ending too there.

Great thread! I watched Educating Rita the other day for the first time and agree the men come out of it (quite deliberately) very badly. I was terrified Rita would get together with Frank (after his issues were cured by the love of a younger woman) and was so delighted that this didn't happen.

Also watched Brief Encounter recently for the first time since I was a teen and totally agree that the male protagonist was a sleazy married man who was constantly pressuring the heroine to go further than she was comfortable with.

A film my DD has recently watched and loved was Missing Link, it's a cartoon. There's a brilliant line at the end from the heroine to the male lead who has been in love with her for years and in a traditional narrative, would end up with the girl at the end.
She turns to him and says something like 'you are a great man, but I deserve better' winks at him and leaves. He stands open mouthed at her refusal of him. The unconformity of this as an ending in a kids film is genius.

"I think you are denying Rita agency OP - she wasn't a pawn of men, she was a woman who actively shaped her world. If she had fucked Frank instead of cutting his hair and gone with him to Australia I'd be totally agreeing with you, but she didn't."

Yep. She had all the power at the end.

Oo, Month Python, yes. Now, I love me some Python - classic individual sketches or any of the films. But I tried rewatching the original TV series a little while back, and I was wishing the ground would open up and swallow me at all the bits Carol Cleveland had to do the simpering sex joke schtick that seemed to belong to a completely different sort of comedy show.

Watched Pretty Woman at the cinema aged 14. Thought it was great. Now - OMG how awful.

Dirty Dancing is now even more sensational than it was when I was a teen.

It's taken decades to unpick all that.

I'm glad you've managed it, Floral - I'm still stuck in the middle of it and it's a right pain in the proverbial. It feels like we have all these narratives available for straight women to slot themselves into - I say all, but it's really a very narrow range - and there's bugger all for women who don't want to be like either the women or the men we see in films etc.

radicalised by motherhood

This is totally a thing; there's a reason the site that ended up jokingly referred to as "the radicalisation portal" is the one where mothers congregate.

And Wuthering Heights - has to be read before 18 so that you don't notice what selfish, terrible people they all are. Ugh.

That's what I loved about Wuthering Heights; it was like EastEnders. Never did understand why everyone seemed to think it was romantic.

It's music videos I seem to have the most trouble with these days. Didn't bat an eyelid as a teen, introducing DD to music I like using youtube, a lot of the time we end up with a different tab onscreen while the music's playing because I'm appalled by the sexualisation that went over my head when I was fifteen.

@AsTreesWalking, you don't wanna see Gamma Bovary when she's angry...

Presumed Innocent radicalised me actually. It was the excavation of the dead woman's vagina for evidence that did it for me. Even dead, her body is just offered up as a plot twist. That was the first film where I really noticed women were just incidentals.

I was also made furious by Senna. Tedious man, tedious sport, elevated to semi mystical experience. What equivalent endeavour by a woman - individualistic endeavour with no value beyond sporting achievement - is given religious validation? And then immortalised on film for us all to watch and adore? I was both bored and angry. As a younger woman I would have watched it avidly to try to learn more about motor sport in order to keep men happy

We've been watching a lot of 80s films lately - Big, Splash, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. It's amazing how women just don't exist in these films other than as hot babe. It's actually astonishing how I never noticed as a teenager. I don't think a single one of the 20 or so films we've watched in the last two months passed the Bechdel test. Oh apart from Sister Act which is still fun (Whoopi Goldberg is always a good think afaic).

I love Sister Act - can't beat it for a cheesy night in. And it's also deeply subversive - the nuns as the ultimate in what men see as repressed prudes, ganging up with a nightclub singer/former gangster's moll, she rescues them from the financial (and existential) collapse of their religious community, they rescue her (quite literally) from her would be murderers.

Maverick - Tom Cruise - stalking Kelly McGillis. To the point that he follows her into the toilet...

So true. I’m now in my fifties and mother to a primary school age DD. I used to love Disney princess films when little, but watching the old ones with DD makes me cringe. I do comment about the 16 year old Cinderella, Ariel etc just dreaming of marrying their prince and being pretty. I talk a lot to my DD - so she thinks that is stupid etc and will now say I’m not watching those princess movies - she prefers the modern ones where the princess is tough and fights her corner eg Moana, Brave, Mulan that sort of thing.

I loved Mrs Doubtfire , I remember someone saying when they were young they though the dad was so much fun and the mum was a moany meanie, only when older she realised that the mum was busting a gut to work, and provide for the kids, and be a stable parent whereas the dad didn’t have the responsibility. Same as Night at the Museum when the ex wife was frustrated with the dad as he wouldn’t get a job to support son . Now after having a cocklodger partner, (ex now), who pays not a penny maintenance and is a happy go lucky Baloo the bear type of man , my views on the ‘no fun’ ex wives is very different. And my DD is already learning the value of money, sees me working hard as a single mum, I think she has the measure already of her dad, I never bad mouth him though - we are perfectly amicable as exes, she’ll draw her own conclusions. She sees him a fun uncle more than a parent I think.

I think growing older definitely can make women more strong in their views, and see films completely different - I agree with Grease, and Pretty Woman - I loved those when young. I do love Sister Act still

Sigh - if only Kelly McGillis could have left it there!

Thinking about books again, one of the things I'm indebted to the women of MN for is a revisionist reading of Pride and Prejudice: Mrs Bennett as much maligned and misunderstood whereas in fact she's the only person who understands, with absolute single minded clarity, what it is to be a woman in that society, and how marriage at all costs is actually the only respectable profession open to a woman.

Agree cara and I was thrilled when my thirteen yo daughter said the same thing - about Mr Bennet being an irresponsible fool and Mrs Bennet being the one with her head screwed on right.

I'm definitely more feminist than I was in my 20s (now 50s) even though I considered myself independent and strong-minded even then.

I think I fell for the 80s bullshit about 'women can have it all' and then just proceeded to beat myself up when I couldn't seem to make it all happen due to the mental load of home and family and (I realise now) a DH who has more misogynistic 1950s-style values than he admitted to.
All my career ambitions were kiboshed by:

• being made redundant when pregnant
• having a child with SEN who needed me to advocate for him
• being the only member of my family to step up to the plate to care for my Dad when he was terminally ill

The thing that really opened my eyes to feminism was going back to uni as a mature student to study English Literature and choosing all the feminist options.