So, a few weeks back, I saw What Women Want. I’ve been pondering it on and off since then. I can’t decide if the film was misogynist or not. Part of me thinks it was. Cute as it may have been, funny though it was, the central message does rather seem to be that What Women Want is a man. Granted, they don’t want the arsehole the Gibson is playing at the start of the film, but still, given the sort of character that Helen Hunt is playing, is does seem that despite all her success, all she’s achieved by standing on her own, all she really wants is Mel…

But there’s another part of me that wonders: Would “What Men Want” have been hugely different? Wouldn’t the answer to that have been “a woman”? Especially given that we are, after all, watching a romance… Yes, there’s an argument to be made that the whole image of women given in the film is as creatures that spend most of their time worrying, and basically being mildly neurotic. But again, I wonder: are men that different? Maybe they worry about different things, but I ssupect that were it not terribly un-macho to admit to being worried about well, anything one might discover that yes, men worry a lot as well.

Is it misogynist to make a funny romantic comedy that, as part of the joke, requires the woman to be weaker, any more than is would be misandrist than to do the reverse?