Sam Hill
Hollywood - have you heard? There’s a new leading lady on the scene!
‘Spoiler alert’, she’s living a fulfilling, meaningful life - and she’s childless. She’s the thousands of women who are coming to terms with childlessness and finding ways to build a new life and happiness, from the ashes. Yes, it really can happen!
But not, it seems, in the movies. I sometimes imagine an alien landing on earth decides to visit the cinema (obviously the first thing an alien wants to do when visiting earth). They grab a bumper box of popcorn and settle in. They’re curious and ask ‘how do humans cope when they don’t achieve their dreams? What do they do when motherhood doesn’t happen’?
Let’s take a trip to our screens to find out….
Our alien finds herself at a classic movie showing. She discovers quickly, childless women are evil, murdering temptresses who steal happily married family men away from their loving families (Fatal Attraction, 1987).
Wait, surely childless women aren’t all out there trying to prevent other people having happy families? Uh, yes. A psychopathic childless woman launches a mission of vengeance against a mother and her family (The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, 1992).
But childless women must at least love animals? Nope! Childless women boil children’s pet rabbits! (I mean, why?) (Fatal Attraction, 1987). Cruela de Vil steals dalmatian puppies to make fur coats out of them (101 Dalmatians, 1996).
Ok, let’s try something lighter. A comedy perhaps. Childless women are sexual deviants, sleeping with any man they can get hold of (they have the time don’t they!) (Samantha in Sex & the City, 1998-2010).
Even when our heroines lead relatively ‘acceptable’ lives they’re depicted as lacking and unfulfilled, and Hollywood steps in to give our stars a ‘miracle baby’ to make their lives complete. Following years of infertility and failed adoptions, Charlotte in Sex and the City not only achieves an adoption but miraculously has a child - against odds, financial capacity and emotional resources that most women in ‘real’ life would find incredulous.
And it doesn’t stop there. Our legal heroine, Ally McBeal (1997-2002), following years of unsuccessful romantic liaisons, finds her life fulfilled when her daughter (she didn’t know existed) knocks at her door - conceived years ago when she donated an anonymous egg to a fertility clinic! Even Jon Bon Jovi who appears on the scene as a kind of plumber-turned-surrogate-dad doesn’t save this story line (although helpfully he does fix the sink).
In The Big Wedding (2013), Katherine Heigel’s character for once looks like she’ll buck the trend - childless woman struggling to conceive. She’s intelligent, accomplished and not a boiled pet in sight - it’s looking good - until about five minutes before the end, she’s given the miracle baby. Right! All women eventually get the child they so desperately want and need, if they’re just patient, don’t they?
Older women must be shown as grandmothers to be truly fulfilled, even if they are considered to be ‘successful’. Shirley Schmidt is an accomplished 60+ year old with her own legal firm, but must be shown to have a grandchild. (Boston Legal, 2004-2008). Diane Keaton, a successful 50+ playwright, gets her man and writes a hit play about her romance, before hitting it off, not only with Jack Nicholson but gorgeous Keanu Reeves too - in the same movie! Surely she can’t want anything more (or have the energy). The movie ends with showing off her new grandchild in the last five minutes of Something’s Gotta Give (2003).
Films can’t seem to move away from adding in a baby, even though a fertility journey is not part of the story, and there’s already a ‘happy’ ending for our heroine (in other words: she gets her man, which is a whole other topic, but I have a word limit here!). I mean, why is pregnancy really necessary to add to the last scenes of Notting Hill (1996) and Bride Wars (2009). And why does our super heroine of single girls need Bridget Jones’s Baby? (2016).
But hey, surely Disney will be kinder? Snow White’s evil stepmother tries to poison her (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937), Rapunzel’s evil adoptive mother tries to steal her youth (Tangled, 2010), as does Julia Roberts in Mirror Mirror (2012).
This is a bit of an over-reaction isn’t it? I mean it’s only a movie after all? But when are mums depicted as evil, murdering, husband tempting, youth stealing, crazed bunny boilers?
So what’s at the root of this, are movies a reflection of society? No, there really are childless women functioning without the need to harm small mammals, and even thriving in their lives! Is it pronatalism? We can’t show women leading fulfilling lives without doing their duty to add more taxpayers and consumers to the world? Is it that childless women subconsciously remind people of aging and death? And we absolutely can’t show aging women in Hollywood?
So, our alien has had a tour of the big screen. What’s her view of earth’s childless women? Evil, murdering, youth stealing, animal skinning, sexual deviants and psychopaths? Or ‘lovely’, but miserable, until they get their miracle baby (which ‘always’ happens if you’re a really nice person and want it enough?) Or very accomplished, mature and successful - but unfulfilled without a child.
In fact, is there any show where a childless woman grieves her childlessness and goes on to lead a fulfilling life? Only, it seems in the movies where we are the leading ladies - real life itself. If Hollywood really was a reflection of life, the movies would show thousands of women braving unbelievable loss, grief and lack of validation, managing to find resourceful, unique and creative ways to live authentic, meaningful and fulfilling lives. These are our true heroines.
Hollywood - you need to get with the picture!
