Boy-men

Knocked Up. It looked like a decent movie with a potentially slightly offensive (bold choice!) title. But then the critics started loving it. And now I can't wait to see it.

An excerpt from this New York Times article:

• "Mr. Apatow’s critique of contemporary mores is easy to miss — it is obscured as much by geniality as by profanity — but it is nonetheless severe and directed at the young men who make up the core of this film’s likely audience. The culture of sexual entitlement and compulsive consumption encourages men to remain boys, for whom women serve as bedmates and babysitters. Resistance requires the kind of quixotic heroism Steve Carell showed in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” or a life-changing accident, like Alison’s serendipitous pregnancy."

Interestingly, we talked about this in one of my media classes two semesters ago. Movies like Punch-Drunk Love, About a Boy, and Bridget Jones' Diary are all about these boy-men who need strong women to take care of/fix them.


(I am one of those women! I want to take care of/fix boy-men! I am trying to not let this happen anymore.)

I tried to bring this point up in a random conversation I had with a guy in a park today. (I love random conversations!) But being a 30-something guy who actually initiates conversations, he did not understand the lame mamma's-boys that are plaguing my girl-power raised generation.

Unless... is girl power making men mamma's boys?

When we shun a guy who, in a vain attempt at being an adult, vaguely cat-calls us, are we turning down the only guy in the vicinity who is not a boy-man? Who is actually brave enough to initiate a dating-like situation? Or, are we properly not encouraging him to continue to be a sexist pig?

Ah, the 21st Century's (no no this isn't even that new. It must have started with the first suffragettes, I don't know) conundrum: girl power/equality, or actually manly men?