The Stepford Wives...

I'm sure this film affects you differently, depending on your sex and age !

I am in the unenviable position of (vaguely) being able to remember the 70s, and I certainly think that the way that the women were depicted is uncomfortably close to the truth - I remember getting girls magazines at the time and doing the quizzes which told you what your 'style' was and where you were heading in life... so, for example, if you answered mostly 'a', you might be seen as a sporty girl destined for the outdoor life, and might look like this...

On the other hand, if you answered mostly 'b', you might be destined for a life in an office, and look like this...

And of course, if you answered mostly 'c', you were the caring, nurturing type that had a life of servitude to look forward to... You would probably aspire to look like this!

The fourth option,'d' was the one I always tried to get - even if it meant fiddling the answers - the dreamy, romantic, artistic type! And this of course, is how I would have looked if all had gone to plan...

Oh well, you know what they say about the best laid plans...

Anyway, enough of my personal dreams- basically, what I wanted to say was that if you put the film into the context of the time it was made, the outfits the women wore were not particularly strange or outlandish - you had the career photographer in the trouser suit, the outgoing Bobbie in the denim hotpants, and the 'Wives' in their uniform of floral pinafore dresses. Likewise, during my youth the impression was definitely still being given to young girls via magazines, that it was a good thing to have a man to take care of. I wonder how the young women today would feel about that?

I have read a couple of reviews that state that Ira Levin, the writer of the original book, must not like women very much - I disagree, as I feel that overall it is the women that are portrayed as the stronger, more interesting characters, and the men as weak-willed and somewhat pathetic bullies. Not happy with living in a lovely picture-perfect town, having good jobs and beautiful wives, they strive to 'improve' their marriages, by taking away any individuality from the women, replacing them instead with sex-slave domestic robots that won't question their authority, and will devote themselves purely to their husbands pleasure. (How many of you men have said at that point " what's so wrong with that then?" ! )

Anyway, I'm off home now to cook the dinner and do a bit of cleaning....