39. The Women (1939)

Directed by George Cukor
Written by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin
Starring Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, and Joan Crawford

High society women dress like cowboys and drink, waiting for their marriages to end. Men only exist on the other end of a telephone line. Without them, (elite, white) femininity reveals itself with bold generosity. Gossip spreads during workouts and manicures. It takes equal parts love and schadenfreude to make a Manhattan friendship work. Only fantasy brings color to the world; clothes turn drab once the models leave the catwalk. Maybe we feel for Mary because she’s a mother, and in this world motherhood tempers rich lady frivolity. Two of my longtime friends each have second babies on the way. Neither is wealthy or married to corporate magnates or whatever. At a P.F. Chang’s forty minutes outside of Philadelphia, my nephew claimed that boys can’t wear tutus. This was during the height of his gender police phase, when, ignoring my toenail polish, he pointed at my braids and said boys can’t have long hair. “Some boys don’t like being boys,” I told him. Anyway, his parents explained that people can wear whatever makes them comfortable, ergo let the tutu’d boys be. My so-called women’s jeans would fit better if I had hips. X says they’re a little uncanny valley. I mean, the stretch-to-denim ratio is pretty suspect. But X has some funny ideas about pants. In 2003 I read the Reno divorce/lesbian awakening novel Desert of the Heart for a comparative lit class. I told my professor it reminded me of D.H. Lawrence. She was horrified. “On the sentence level,” I explained. But the damage was done. I’m a better person for all the times she called me out on my shit. If only she had been right about the post-Bush socialist revolution. I’m still waiting.