MONDO EXTRAS

My friend and colleague Leigh Alexander recently explained the current status quo well: "I know I'm not allowed to think that what men think is important. I am not allowed to feel insecure about my desirability ever because I need to be A KICKASS AWESOME INSPIRING FEMALE HEROINE and if I want anyone to think I am attractive or 'wife material' that means I am participating in the evil patriarchy and I have been brainwashed by the ad industry and social conditioning or whatever." By simply having a woman without clothes on not hate her figure/weight nor exist solely as a sex object for a man nor absolutely love her body 100 percent nor be so straight-up brave, Girls does a service to womankind -- something hinted at when Adam whispers to Hannah mid-thrust: "You modern career woman. I know what you like. You think you can come in here and just talk all that noise?" Maybe the guy she's sleeping with right now is a complete a-hole, but Hannah enjoys having sex with him, and neither her body nor sex with him doesn't exist so that the audience can laugh at the idea of a woman wanting to have it in the first place.

As one of the few souls who didn't like Bridesmaids (though that's a whole other piece, and an outdated one at that), I was particularly turned off by its treatment of Melissa McCarthy's conventionally unattractive body. Because she's fat, her sexuality is funny; it's laughable that she wants sex. If you're fat, you want dirty, rough, freaky sex, too. The idea of her character, Megan, wanting to be sexy and to enjoy a quickie with an Air Marshal had to be drawn incredibly over-the-top in order for it to be palatable to mainstream audiences because real women, women worth dating and marrying, don't want to speak out about having sex. That's just for those weird ugly girls. Most recently, American Reunion was also guilty of this, with a major punchline being that a girl who Stifler used to get great blowjobs from is fat now. GROSS!