went to see mona lisa smile today with, ahem, toni, erin, whitmama, jill, em tortora and jess stathis. the movie was good, if only b/c it featured my two favorite actresses, julia roberts and julia stiles, and also b/c it was just really pretty. for all the gender inequality, the 1950’s was a very asthetic decade. everyone wore tea length skirts and polka dots and curled their hair and wore pearls and red lipstick.
in a more intellectual analysis, the film raised a lot of my women’s college issues. first of all, i’ll bet my pink zebra-print pajamas that some of the ladies at mount holyoke are going on and on about how relieved they are that their own dear school didn’t sell out to hollywood. i don’t think the movie should automatically be perceived as an intentional insult to all women’s schools. things have changed (though, not everything!) and i think the script itself made the point that wellesley is no longer the most conservative institution in the country – a lot has changed at most colleges in the country. secondly, i’ll bet my fluffy spa bathrobe that they believe mount holyoke and its students will never succumb to influences, traditions or values from the outside world, no matter what the era. mona lisa smile could just as easily have featured mount holyoke. students could have chased after, married or cried about boys from amherst. they could have slept with one professor and ridiculed another. they probably enrolled in etiquette courses for that easy A. they even could have rejected modern art and progressive ways of thinking. let’s be honest, lots of scandalous stuff has gone down in mount holyoke’s history. it isn’t perfect. why do you have to keep claiming that it is? it’s that elitist attitude that drives me crazy every time. there’s school pride and then there’s arrogance.
though it stirred up all these dissonant emotions about my all-women’s past (and future), the movie did feature a lot of positive references that i could associate with mount holyoke. the girls all wore beanies in their class color. they have traditions like hoop rolling and convocation. the dorms were beautiful (bricks and ivy and hardwood floors, naturally), and they had bell desks where male visitors could call. oh, the 1950’s were so chaste. i would have fit right in. except for the whole beanie thing; beanies aren’t for me in any decade.
quote of the day: “just remember, when a dream appears, you belong to me.” – you belong to me
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