inkskinned:

some stuff isn’t just a trope, you know? in the movies, we’re introduced to women who are “experts” who have trained for years, who live and breathe and are willing to die for whatever the male main character has never even experienced before. and then he takes the reigns and upstages her, instantly, with a little bit of friendly bewilderment because, come on, it’s not antifeminist, he’s just good, he’s standing there having shown he’s actually more powerful than she’ll ever be – and we buy it. and then we go home and when we live and breathe something we still ask ourselves. “am i actually good at this? or is some fool going to walk into this presentation eighteen minutes in and offer a sarcastic and biting correction?” we wait for the man to show up and prove that, despite awards and training and an excellent job position, we’re actually just secretly incompetent.

the trope isn’t just setting up for us “this man is good at what he does” – the fact that the trope demands our male hero upstage the woman says: even an incompetent man will always be better than the best woman. he could have upstaged the sage boss or whatever other male in power exists in the movie. but he doesn’t. he upstages the woman to earn his pack order because she is, intrinsically, the weakest link. the real fight will be man against man. it always is.

and i wish, i wish it stopped outside of the theater. but the number of men who try (gently) to assure me that they’re actually better at what i have multiple degrees and years of experience in – it tells me it worked. men are always looking to be the hero, to interrupt, to upstage, to flip the woman on her back and expose her to all your fellow men – see! for someone who has been doing this forever, she’s just another woman. i am reminded by a man this is called mansplaining. i said “it’s a system of silencing women” and he said, “no, it’s just an accident.” in the movie, he sees himself pointing to my equation on the board, having just walked in. “here’s the flaw,” he says. in the real life, i’m too frustrated to speak. in the movie, he’s inevitably right.

elle woods flipping her hair and saying what, like it’s hard? was a funny line. it’s funny because in every other movie, it’s said by a guy.

thing is, elle woods was in no way inexperienced. she had a great gpa, has been a leader for years (her sorority, anyone?), studied hard for this. and the line was still funny. because har har, a woman, a dumb blonde, she thinks she can compete? with this manly man, who at no point in this movie showed any competence at all? who stopped receiving good grades as soon as he didn’t have a woman to support him? come on. we all know that if this wasn’t a comedy, she wouldn’t have surpassed him. it’s unrealistic, you know.