Once upon a time I loved the Hallmark Channel, and I will
confess, every once in a while they release a decent fiction I do enjoy
especially during the chilly yet cozy winter holiday season, but recently that
love is fading. How can it not when I recognized that movie after movie women
were being fed the ugliest of subliminal lies: Despite the happiness and success you think you may have now, deep down
you’re a lonely miserable failure if you’re single and childless. That joy and
satisfaction you are now feeling in your career and social life is only a façade—worthless
and temporary.
It hit me when I decided to DVR a movie called A Ring by Spring. The informational
snippet made it sound like an interesting sci-fi of magic and love and my boredom
intrigued me to play some sort of romance rubbish in the background while I
worked on the leadership curriculum of a conference I am planning with the Los
Angeles Sheriff’s Department. The movie was pretty much just that. It was the
story of a successful and happy business consultant who was content with the
progress of the relationship with her long-term boyfriend. After hearing a
fortuneteller explain that she was destined to “receive a ring by Spring” or
she’ll never wed, she assumes her boyfriend plans on proposing when he invites
her to dinner at a classy five-star venue. However, when he ends up breaking off
the relationship, she is confused, and upon asking why he simply replies,
“You’re not marriage material.” Like me she despised that sentiment,
considering it utterly offensive to a human, and begins to psychoanalyze her
past, present and future.
She embarks on a soul-searching journey and tracks down
each of her ex-boyfriends to inquire as to why they ended the relationship. In
her first meeting with her high school boyfriend she discovers her first supposed flaw. After rambling about his
picture perfect picket fence life with a wife, children and the ever so clichéd
golden retriever, he then turns to ask her if she married or has kids, to which
she replies. “No, no I’m still an army of one.” He follows it up with the first
slap in the face: “Well that doesn’t surprise me.” Seriously? Did he just tell
her that she seemed un-dateable since they were 17?
“It doesn’t?” she asks curiously. He shakes his head no and
continues, “No, you were always so independent, so self-contained.” Slap in the
face #2. Can someone tell me where the error is in a woman being independent
and self-contained? Because the answer he gives is utterly ridiculous. “Brandy
[his wife] is the opposite. She needs a lot of attention.” She then asks
confused, “So Brandy is high maintenance?” He nods in agreement and with pride
says, “Majorly!” She continues. “And if I’m the opposite of that, that means
I’m low maintenance?” He smiles and says, “In high school you sure were!” Her
expression was beyond puzzlement. “But isn’t low maintenance a good thing?” To
which he replies yet another fib that only seems to complicate the ability to
comprehend the male species. “Well I like high maintenance. I like being
needed.”
First, let me differentiate to the sad writers and
producers of these Hallmark films, the difference between being independent and
self-contained and demonstrating a sense of neediness. If a woman is capable of
taking care of herself, it doesn’t mean she has no room for a man in her life.
A romantic partner can provide some special and valuable benefits one can’t
find from friends or family. That is a feeling that I’m not sure I would define
as a “need” as much as I would label it a “want” and I feel that wanting a romantic
partner is better than needing one. However, that doesn’t mean it is a
mandatory void to be filled.
And since when did men WANT a high maintenance partner?
Isn’t all that we’re trained and informed in this dysfunctional world of
relationships to avoid? Ingrained in our freethinking minds the concept of
being un-invested? Self-contained and independent beings who show men we are
not at all needy or interested, but mysterious and chase-able beings? I still
don’t see how women are considered the confusing incomprehensible sex.
The film continues on her journey of self-discovery,
where ex-boyfriend after ex-boyfriend informs her of how she was too much of a
determined and goal oriented woman to be loved long-term. Rather they took a
backseat and refused to be her supportive partner, who illustrated their pride
in such a free-spirited visionary. One ex had tested her by breaking up with
her to see how desperate she would be afterwards and whether or not she begged
for his return. I see. So one must degrade themselves on their hands and knees
and plead to prove their love for you? Nice one Hallmark. Nice.
It’s sad, because I really did enjoy the holiday
sweetness of romance films that were the nice touch to an evening by the
fireplace and a mug of hot chocolate. Action & Suspense films, here I come!
After she heard all these offensive and ridiculous
sentiments, Hallmark ensures her to be such a naïve and innocent passive female
who decided to revolutionize and change herself to become the woman all these
men need. She returned to her most
recent boyfriend, told him he was wrong about her being “marriage-able” [yes,
the one positive thing she had in her script—refusing to be called “marriage
material”] and begged him to try again with her. Instantly they began wedding
planning, doing all the things she never once mentioned or showed interest in;
and all the time she was falsely convinced (despite her discomfort) that this
is her destiny as a female.
Really? Since childhood she, like me, had demonstrated
the sensibility of a woman living her life for her, and not for the intent that since birth she’s been on the
hunt. Prowling for a man to complete her because all along apparently she was
incomplete. This character too was less than satisfied with the story of Romeo
& Juliet—two immature adolescents who mistook lust for love and decided
life was worthless without it. She never believed that it was the end of the
world if she remained single in life because the love and happiness she
received from her family, friends and career was satisfactory. But like many
other women in this life, every time she indulged in that joy and bliss she was
reprimanded. Ex-boyfriends. Peers. A fortuneteller.
These
films always seem to portray successful businesswomen or workingwomen as
imbalanced beings who should not be in this position. And unlike their male
counterparts, who are not only deemed worthy of having the career-oriented life
but granted permission for it, these women are ironically shamed for it and
chastised by their male partners instead of supported, as it would have been
the other way around. Why?
For those who were wondering however, I would like to
share with you the great news that she did indeed find true love, as they all
do in these films. The CEO of the business she was consulting for fell in love
with her at first glance; and as she took the analytical self-discovery quest,
he waited and yearned for her till she finally noticed him in the last 65
seconds of the film, when he gave her a Cracker Jack box that miraculously was
the one carrying a plastic ring. Therefore, the fortuneteller’s vision came
true—she received a “ring” of some sort the day before Spring and was therefore
not “doomed” to an eternity of the weirdly dreaded singlehood.
Bravo Hallmark! Bravo!
And just a final note
Hallmark, there is something else that you portray in a majority your films that is
also ridiculously untrue: The ideology that all women are inherently and
subconsciously attracted to the country small town boys in jeans and a flannel
shirt rather than the Wall Street clean shaven suit and tie kind of guy.
Um…really? Life is full of diversity. Women and men are attracted to a number
of different characters and attributes. So why are all the women in your films
illustrated as oblivious to the reality that their hearts only desire the poor
country boy chopping wood and lounging in cabins and were for years blindly
stuck in a relationship with a handsome accountant or stock broker. To each her
own.
