GirlTalk

I’ve been trying to summon my inner Carrie Bradshaw and be brave enough to write, publicly, about relationships for this section of our blog ... and I think I might be ready. So I’ll try to start this section and see how it goes.

Last night, one of my best girlfriends and I decided to watch the movie “Made of Honor,“ featuring Patrick Demsey, also known by Grey’s Anatomy watchers as “Dr. McDreamy,“ as “Tom,“ and Michelle Monaghan as “Hannah”. For those who haven’t either seen the movie or it’s previews, I’ll offer a brief summary: It’s a classic story of girl meets boy, girl likes boy, boy likes girl but both are (a.) too scared to admit it (b.) too chicken to make a move and are therefore quickly thrust into a (sometimes awkward) platonic friendship (also known as “the friend zone”). In this movie, the two meet in college and are friends for ten years before Hanna decides to get engaged and asks Tom to be her “maid of honor.“ Tom, finally moving out of his emotionally dead persona, realizes he just can’t let her go and decides the only way to break up her wedding is by taking on the role of maid of honor and do it from the inside. It was an OK flick, a little cheesy but sometimes funny and tolerable for a light chick flick. Think: “My Best Friend’s Wedding,“ switch the genders and take away two and half of its five stars.

There are so many things I want to say about this movie that I’ve found it hard to condense them into something anyone would want to waste their time reading. So, fair warning, you might want to get out now if you have no interest in male-female friendships, love or gender roles. I promise I won’t be mad.

The reason the film caught my eye, I’ll admit, was the whole best-guy-friend plotline. I’ve always been the kind of girl with guys friends. I don’t know why. In fairness, I haven’t had crushes on any of them. Except one. More on that later, maybe. For now, I’ll say I’m an avid supporter of woman/man friendships, because I feel like it helps to have someone on your side that isn’t really on your team. Men think about things differently and in this brillant way by using something called “logic,“ something I grapple with, especially when it comes to my feelings ... so it helps when I can run things by them and hear a trusted fresh perspective. With that said, I argue feverishly in the way of “YES, a man and a woman CAN be just friends,“ contrary to what Harry from “When Harry Met Sally” may say.

This movie focuses on the opposite of my “just friends” arguement. After ten years of an awkwardly platonic friendship (I say awkward because the film develops the idea of an underlying ‘something more’ early on), Hannah gets engaged to a seemlingly flawless man. We’re talking the full package: Handsome, worldly, wealthy and romantic. She is, for the first time in her life, totally smitten and happy with a man. Of course, it’s at this time that Tom decides he has feelings for Hannah and tries to win her back.

Tom, throughout the last ten years of their friendship had been a womanizer, complete with a list of rules to dating that include “no back-to-backs,“ and “no more than one date per woman, per week.“ He was emotionally cut off, anti-commitment and, despite the very aparent perfect connection and relationship he had with Hannah, cowardly would not admit to his true feelings.

(Spoiler alert!) On Hannah’s wedding day, Tom finally convinces Hannah not to marry her fiancee by barging into the church during the ceremony and telling her, “I love you.“ And here is where I get most upset: She takes him! She leaves her fiancee, who has been nothing but wonderful to her since day one, for her jerk of a best friend who took ten years to admit his true feelings. If I sound biased, it’s because I am, since I’d like to think I would have kicked his sorry butt to the curb.

The whole scenario got me thinking. I ask you to recall this scene in “My Best Friend’s Wedding.“ Julianne did the same thing to Michael, as his best man, only Michael’s response was different. He stayed put with his fiancee.

My question is, what do these two different endings to essentially the same movie say about gender roles? Why, as a woman, was Hannah so easy to leave her fiancee on her wedding day? Also, do you think her response is typical or atypical of the average woman? My biggest question to women out there is this: Would you leave or stay? Why?