Τούτσι

p e r s i a 🍒4.0

jessica lange winning an oscar for this movie for simply being hot is kinda iconic behaviour in my opinion

Karsten4.0

One of my mom’s favorite movies, because of course it is! Hilarious script, great performances all around, and Bill Murray!

Sally Jane Black

There are better ways to deliver this message.In the service of conveying a supposedly feminist message, the film engages in misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia. Feminism is not men learning to empathize with women by using them. Feminism is not a man preying on a woman who has been his friend for years to keep up a lie. Feminism is not using Michael's disgust at being kissed by a man as the inspiration for his changing character to be stronger. This is just in the first half hour."I'm seeing a real nice woman now." "Oh yeah?" "You think I didn't check her out?" The transphobia is fucking raw.There is an undercurrent of TERF thinking here. In the service of making a film addressing the plight of cis gender women, this film presents the argument of those right-wing misogynists parading as "feminists": that men will dress as women to invade women's spaces, prey on them, lie to them, manipulate them. That a "man" presenting femininely is nothing but a predator. While this is emphatically not a film about a trans woman, it still rings in the hearts and minds of those who want to hate trans women.The truth is, cisgender, straight men don't do this because they don't have to. If they are determined to manipulate and deceive women, this society has so many other options available to them. Experiencing "life as a woman" is hardly necessary. Nor, then, is "experiencing life as a woman" the necessary path to empathy. The argument is not and should not be "walk a mile in our shoes." It should be "patriarchy holds you back, too." Not that I expected that of this film; I got what I expected of this film: 1980s bourgeois/white "feminism" enriching a bunch of white men.The most feminist moment in the film is when Michael says "rape is no laughing matter." I guarantee you in the preceding scene, audiences were laughing at the idea. I hope that line made some of them stop and think, but it certainly didn't.Then there's the old classic trope of "men don't know how to care for babies, haha." This is facile. The observation is meaningless without class and gender analysis that goes further than noting the patriarchal enforcement of the rigid gender role of women as caretakers. I wouldn't even demand it get into the why of it. I'd accept less; it gives even less than that. The film includes but does not limit itself to making fun of plastic surgery, making sure we know Dorothy is "fat" and "masculine," "not all that militant." It makes sure we know that, haha, Michael tricked almost everyone, hurt almost everyone, but in the end, can patch things up with someone he spent a very long time lying to and manipulating, betraying her confidence, and endangering her job. The level of opportunistic, sociopathic devotion to a lie it would take to maintain this deception for your own personal benefit is horrifying.Sandy and Julie have moments of strength and dignity, but they don't make up for the redemption arc Michael gets after subjecting them and us to this narrative. It doesn't account for the fact that this narrative is a man teaching women how to be "strong" while using them and violating their consent. He touches her while she's falling asleep. I shuddered. He leans over to kiss her while she's at her most vulnerable. He's every TERF's idea of trans women, crossdressers, even drag queens. He's what they think we are. So to be clear: Michael is not a trans woman in the narrative of this film. Trans women are not pretending to be women; we are women. Trans women are not preying on women; men do not engage in social transitioning, hormone replacement, surgery, name changes, or even secret escapades dressing like women to prey on women. They are right there out in the open doing it. This film received accolades for being feminist while portraying every TERF's horror story. It's terrifying. When John almost rapes "Dorothy," I felt my stomach heave. That's how trans women get killed. That's what this film is portraying: the minimalization of trans people's lives and the distorted representations TERFs convey of us.This film is lauded as a comedy. It's not funny; it's frustrating. The message that women want someone angry who stands up for herself as representation? The insights into how women are treated in the television/play/movie industry? The commentary on the cost of clothing and makeup? The way men treat women? This could have been empowering, but it was made for only one kind of woman. “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own," Audre Lorde said. Tootsie said, "To hell with trans women, gay men, non-white women, fat women, and basically anyone who isn't blonde." Let's not give this one a pass.And I hate the soundtrack.