Articles & Letters
 
Walking in Her Heels
Gannett Suburban Newspapers, December 12, 1994
by Georgette Gouveia

Maternity, mammography, sexual harassment--all experiences of womandhood, right?

Not when Arnie's getting pregnant, Michael's being attacked by Demi, and Tom's playing Mommy and Daddy to a child vampire. Not to mention Jay Thomas finding a lump in his breast on CBS' Love and War.

On screens big and small, men are discovering what it's like to walk in women's pumps, so to speak.

"Role reversals are a hoot," says former Pound Ridge resident Michael Douglas, who nonetheless is hardly laughing when he's sexually harassed by Demi Moore in the drama Disclosure.

Like Douglas' victimized executive, others are bewitched, bothered and bewildered by this reveral of fortune. Filmmakers and critics, members of the women's and men's movements, gender experts and casual observers wonder what's behind it, beyond Hollywood's desire to tickle, tweak and titilate.

"It's very complex," says Diane Welsh, president of New York City National Organization for Women. "I don't think any one message is being delivered other than trying to make movies that have a broad-based appeal.

Men exploring women's experiences is both an extension of and a reaction against feminism, observers say.

"We've spent the last 25 years in a discussion about the role of feminism and of women in society," says Ian Praiser, co-executive producer of CBS' Love and War, who drew on his own personal experiences in writing the funny, telling episode in which Jay Thomas' character discovers a lump in his breast and has a mammogram. "But there's never been a discussion of the male role in society."

Says Douglas, "I think [men] have a tough time trying to establish how to function, particularly in relation to women."

Trying on women's roles, then, is an attempt to sort out and express what defines a man, although Anthony Nazzaro, membership director of the Manhattan-based National Organization for Men and a Dobbs Ferry resident, says gender bending only adds to the confusion.

"You don't have to be in an accident to know what it's like," he says.

Another result of feminism has been a broadening of opportunities for women.

"It wouldn't make sense to have a story in which you have a woman CEO, and she didn't know what to do," says Wendy McKenna, a Port Chester-based psychologist who specializes in gender issues and teaches at Purchase College and Barnard.

There's also a reluctance in our politically correct times to see women in any but the most respectful terms. As Welsh acknowledges, "We talk about Michael Douglas' butt getting patted, and I can laugh. But if his name were Michelle Douglas, I'd be up in arms."

Given women's inroads in virtually every field and the sensitivity to minorities, there's only one group Hollywood can plunk down in situations preposterous or precarious without wild protest--and that is white heterosexual males. They, however, have had just about enough of the wrong kind of attention.

"I think a lot of men, especially straight white men, feel very ignored," says Randy P. Conner, a visiting scholar in the University of Southern California's new gender studies program and author of Blossom of Bone, a recent book exploring the tie between homoeroticism and ritual. "It's almost like: Gays are getting attention; women are getting attention. What about me?"

It was to answer that question that the National Organization for Men was formed, says founder Sidney Siller.'

"Heterosexual men in America have no representation," he says. "We're trying to fill that role."

Siller says films like Disclosure, Mrs. Doubtfire, in which Robin Williams is a divorced dad who dons female duds to secure time with his kids, and the 1993 CBS movie Men Don't Tell, in which Peter Strauss starred as a physically abused husband, can serve a social purpose by reminding viewers that men, too, have been victims of domestic violence, sexual harassment, and laws that deny them custodial rights.

Conner cites the Love and War mammography episode as a revelation.

"I had no earthly idea that men can have breast cancer," he says. "Doctors never talk to men about their parts."

But feminists worry that in focusing on issues that only affect men in the minority, filmmakers may be trivializing the kind of suffering and discrimination that women have experienced in greater numbers.

Manhattan-based artist Lisa DiLillo, whose "Kitchen Commando" video (at the College of New Rochelle's Castle Gallery) uses Barbie and action figures to consider gender stereotypes, won't be seeing Disclosure.

"It's absurd, and it makes me angry," she says. "It doesn't represent the real situation. It dilutes and discredits the reality that sexual harassment, abuse and degradation of women is prevalent.

"Men have been victimized in other situations...like war and street violence. But why bring up a man as a victim in a situation that really doesn't exist?"

Because, Anthony Nazzaro says, "however small the percentage may be, there's another side of the coin."

What may be at the heart of this role-switching is a desire to know the other--the other, McKenna says, generally being defined as female.

"I think a lot of men do have the desire to give birth," Conner says. "I think a lot of men are still not willing to say it. It's the desire to be protean."

Conversely, McKenna says, "I think women wonder what it would be like to have power, what it would be like to walk down a street and not worry about being raped."

Says Ian Praiser: "I'd like to think that this [role-playing] is so there'd be greater understanding and not just because there's a profit motive."

Return to Articles and Letters page

Printer-Friendly Version