Mood:  caffeinated

I have a confession to make, and I am not one bit embarrassed by it.  I love Doris Day movies.  There is only one thing Doris Day related issue that ever irked me and it was as nonsensical as a hairstyle, until now.  My Dream is Yours was captured dutifully by my DVR so that I could watch something non-TV-programming after work.  Little did I know that I would spend the majority of the movie in feminist indignation.

I don't usually let the celluloid depictions of inequality between the sexes bother me.  It's all culturally sound depictions of past and present beliefs after all.  I don't think that fixing sexist media is possible as long as the media is simply pandering to what people want.  That said, since I was four and rolled on the floor in laughter at Crissy from Three's Company's assertion that she NEEDED a man, I have exhibited a certain expectations for the single woman.   I think what gets me the most easily incensed is a female character who helps others to degrade her.  

Anna, quel particolare piacere (AKA Secrets of a Call Girl) was the first time that I really paid attention to the movie depictions of a woman setting the trap for herself.  Perhaps the desperation of circumstances isn't adequately explained to justify someone letting themselves be so mistreated, but it was supposed to be there?

My Dream is Yours is not quite as bad as Anna, quel particolare piacere, but I was sputtering none the less.  Not only does the only single and self-sufficient woman in the movie allow herself to be walked all over constantly by others, but a single mother is one of the character's doing the walking.  The movie very unsubtly lets the audience know that motherhood elevates a woman above other childless and/or single women to the extent that being a man is elevating.  Compound this with the single mother's obsession with getting a man.  Obsession can be the only way to describe it as she jeopardizes her career and relationships to stand by a man who  not only isn't there, but with whom there had been woefully little romance with to begin with.  One dinner date does not a husband make!

In true Hollywood fashion, everything works out in the end and the nice guy who only walked all over the single independent woman gets the single mother.  Ah, how lovely.  And of course, the single independent woman might not be single for long if her end of movie hook-up with the old, old, rich boss is to be believed.  Her dreams must be answered, I'm sure.

On the upside, this movie did not feature the long worn Doris Day hairdo that I really dislike.  She looked great!