She's The Man-Woman

Why not start with the dumbest example first? As you can see, I couldn’t resist using She’s the Man, which is (in case you have seen it) basically a contemporary movie adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. In this film, Viola (Amanda Bynes) really wants to play soccer, but the girl’s team at her school got cut. Viola’s twin brother Sebastian wants to go play with his band in London instead of going to his new boarding school. So, in classic comedic form, Viola decides to impersonate her brother at the new school and play soccer there. Viola has to learn how to walk, talk, and act like a guy in the process and there is even a fun sequence with fake mustaches. Once she gets there, a female classmate begins to have a crush on her, Viola crushes on her roommate, etc. Eventually, Viola gets to play in “the big game” and all ends happily ever after. What is important about this example is that the only way for Viola to prove to herself and to everyone else that a girl could play the sport with the boys was to do it in disguise. People probably would have laughed if she had just decided to go and join the team—and probably wouldn’t have let her because of possible injury.

I think that for the most part, we don’t get too many of these literal “girls-dressing-up-as-guys-so-they-can-succeed” stories anymore. Woman are able to do much more today than they could in the texts we have been studying. I do, however, think that there are times when women feel they need to act more masculine to appear less “emotional” and quite as capable as their male counterparts. Businesswomen (so I hear) often have to make themselves a lot tougher so that they don’t get pushed around by the men at work and this is even the case in politics. Hillary Clinton seemed to wear a lot of pant suits while she was out campaigning, because she needed to look polished and tough—a woman ready to lead. It probably would have caused a lot of trouble if she had really embraced her femininity while running for office. Can you imagine the “look at her legs!” comments, if she had worn tons of skirts? What’s so ironic about it, is that this very quality put a lot of people off from her and made her seem, well I can’t use the word here, but I bet you can guess what it rhymes with!