The Women. I just got home from seeing this movie. It was an experience that left me a bit appalled, and not just because the acting is so atrocious (it is) nor because it is a film rife with clichés and negative female stereotypes, but because it promises the opposite based on the premise that there are no men in the movie whatsoever. Whatever, the absence or presence of members of the male sex in a movie matters not to me. I was interested, however, in the way The Women would represent the central characters given that, unlike Sex and the City, the plot doesn’t revolve around their pursuit of the opposite sex.

In fact, it was far worse. Rather than depict a slew of sexy New York women obsessed with their boyfriends and husbands, The Women simply depicted a slew of sexy New York women obsessed with material things. (It also operated as a veritable 2 hour commercial for Dove bath products and Saks Fifth Avenue department stores, but that’s another essay altogether)

To be fair, a fixation with fashion is present in Sex and the City as well, but it takes a back seat to endless array of coffee and lunch dates during which the four friends discuss their love lives, sometimes with a modicum of introspection. Not so in The Women where the pursuit of Prada directly distracts from Meg Ryan’s suffering daughter, who not only professes a foreboding fixation with her weight (which her mother shrugs off with a chuckle) but who, at the age of 11ish is carting around cigarettes, contemplating sex, burning tampons and having inappropriate conversations with her father’s mistress who is simultaneously soaking in the tub. To top it all off, the film ends without addressing any of the aforementioned issues, but focuses instead on the central character’s self-staged fashion show, a parade of wafer thin models in Calvin Klein-esque pieces. The daughter, of course, is starry eyed, joining her mother on the runway and beaming like all is well. This parting scene is pointed at female empowerment but left this viewer wondering what the director/producer was smoking. Put the budding anorexic eleven year old on the runway alongside a string of walking hangers and an oblivious mother and you’ve got a recipe for disaster, not empowerment.

To me, womanhood is about connection and unification, about nurturance and self exploration. This movie, however managed to affect the reverse, reducing, objectifying and stupefying women while professing to do the opposite. It doesn’t help things that Meg Ryan started the film curly-haired, flat soled and digging around in her garden (pre-adultery induced epiphany) and ended it with stick straight locks, sky high Christian Louboutin heels, and a budding career on the New York fashion scene.

This transformation was intended to affect a “you go girl” sentiment, particularly because it followed the antics of a philandering husband, a disappointing father, (both alluded to, not shown) and a nasty divorce. It seemed to me, however, that the change was more indicative of a loss of self than a discovery of one. Perhaps I’m dragging my own baggage in here…or my own allegiance to curly-haired keds-wearers, but it’s been my personal experience that, regardless of the circumstance, and particularly when it pertains to females, movements away from the natural (curls, minimal makeup, gardening etc) and towards the artificial (flat ironed, manicured, couture clad, etc) indicates a movement away from one’s essential self. The fact that post-transformation the character is suddenly attractive to her husband again is beyond me as well.

This film was the Sarah Palin of the cinema – seemingly supportive of women but secretly pointed at demeaning them, an aim obscured by sharp words, perfectly painted lips, designer labels, and of course, XX chromosomes.