Oh, I’ll be a good worker alright!
One time I asked my wife’s grandmother - who is pushing 80 and is the absolute picture of “sweet little old lady” - what her favorite movie is, and she kind of blushed and said “oh, well, it’s an old one.” I was thinking she was going to say Breakfast at Tiffany’s or maybe even something like It Happened One Night, and then she said Pretty Woman. Even my wife was shocked. We still laugh about that, years later.
Yeah, I’m definitely not a Dirty Dancing fan, although I guess the appeal is obvious enough: plain looking girl overcomes fears, learns to dance, and has a romance with sexy guy. But seriously, what a schlocky movie. Lots of girls still love it though – I remember there was one weekend in college where some cable channel was doing a Dirty Dancing marathon, and all weekend I was hearing “Time of My Life” coming from different dorm rooms!
It’s just a fun movie is all. I don’t want to be Julia Roberts. I don’t want to wind up with Richard Gere. It’s just kind of a light, fluffy, brain-candy-esque movie. You don’t need to think about it much - in fact it’s better if you don’t .
It’s quite a bit like a Harlequin Romance for the screen.
HubZilla, more like, “Oh, gee, well, you thought I was just some scrounge off the street? Well, guess what? I’m not-you just lost out on some big time sales, bitch!” Basically, if you’re in a business where you’re taking care of customers ACT LIKE IT. Treat all your customers like, well, customers. It has nothing to do with “forseeing” anything.
Something similiar happened to my cousin and his fiance at Tiffanys a few months ago, when they were looking at bands. They were dressed down, and the salesclerk was somewhat dismissive. He wanted to tell her, “Oh, well, sorry, we have to go to work-I have to go and train young men to fight over in Iraq, and she has to take care of little kids with cancer!” (His fiance is a pediatric oncologist)
So they lost a sale there.
I just liked it for the shopping parts. (I hate Julia Roberts). And the clothes. Love, love, love the pretty dresses.
This is it, the thread won’t end here (there is way too much arm chair philosophy to be discussed) but all women think they have “prostituted” themselves in the past (with other lovers who did not give them what they needed) and ‘romance’ (with a rich guy) wipes it all away.
Women like it NOW. I surveyed 10 women at the office and eight had it in their top 10 and a few, even though not asked, offered it up as their all-time favorite. Average age of women: 31.
My survey is consistent with all my prior anecdotal experiences since 1990.
Speaking as a male that’s what this thread made me think of immediately. People of both genders like a lot of entertainment that makes them look creepy or shallow if you analyze it and take it too seriously.
All women? Gotta cite for that? Because I got one right here in this chair says your theory is wrong. Unless that was a very poor taste joke and you forgot the row of smileys.
I’m sure they’re out there, but I don’t personally know any women who’d find that theory accurate. I do know several who’ve dumped their rich husbands.
The thing about Pretty Woman: the fact that it is quite popular among women could speak volumes about female/male relationships and could demonstrate that a fair number of women are hypocrites.
As to the movies men like, I am not so sure there is a specific type of movie that we could pinpoint that would speak volumes about female/male relationships. Movies like Gladiator, The Godfather, etc.
This is IMHO, so I was hoping to keep it light. But let me tell you where I was coming from with my questioning:
Two very serious relationships in the past ended in like this (BTW, I am 41 now, just divorced after 12 years and now dating again):
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As soon as times got tough when I was switching schools and careers, my GF at the time decided (impatiently) that, “It’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as it is a poor man”. And she was gone. That’s her quote to me in one of our last convos. I got rolled after just one time when I was struggling with school/work/money. In the years we were together ONE WEEKEND was tough for me. So, she whored herself out to some guy whose family was wealthy. She stuck with him through the SAME struggles she didn’t tolerate from me, because when he was done school he had a trust fund and a corporate job in his dad’s company. Period - end of story.
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The next GF was a nurse and was a few years older than me. I was finishing school and doing fairly well career-wise, but I was only 20-something at the time, so I could only be so successful. She called me up and explained that she “wants the kind of guy that can afford to pick her up in a BMW, and when there is a puddle, he can afford to take of his leather jacket and lay it on the ground for her”. I wish I made this up.
Now, at 41, I am single again, successful, and want to avoid pitfalls. I am not trying over-simplify relationships, so let’s keep it light here in the IMHO forum. I always tell people that Og has been VERY good to me with women. It’s a blessing and a curse. I am very lucky (or not) to be able to go out with stunning women. In my heart, I wanted to believe that stunning women don’'t have to be shallow, and that they don’t have to be gold diggers or wield their beauty as power or in shallow ways.
And presto…here I am and I think I am finding the same kind of women. Forget how well I am doing, there is always somebody making more. Maybe I attract the wrong kind of women? I don’t know, but after hearing the newest girl rate Pretty Woman as her all time favorite movie, I gotta wonder…
…because the other two women that rolled me for ‘richer’ guys were big-time Pretty Woman fans!
Let the psychoanalysis begin! 
Well, that’s a quote from Lorelei (Marilyn Monroe) to Dorothy (Jane Russell) in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” And Dorothy falls in love with the poor man, despite her friend’s advice (which is partially mocked in the movie).
So, not only are you dating the wrong women, you’re watching the wrong movies.
Well, Philster, maybe you gotta take a step down from “stunning.” I think it’s pretty funny that men bitch and moan that women sometimes have unfair dating criteria, but they are the ones who put “no fatties” in their personal ads. How many perfectly nice, loving, responsible women have you passed up because they weren’t cute? I bet it’s probably a lot less than the number of women who have passed you up because you aren’t rich.
I can hear you saying “But! But! I don’t want to be stuck screwing an ugly chick all my life!” Well, many women don’t want to be stuck in leaky apartments driving used cars all their lives.
Anyway, at least you have a chance of doing something about not having much money. Imagine if your ability to find a mate depended pretty much entirely on the genetic lottery? And not only that, but your “value” declines pretty steeply after you reach like 25, and you understand you get less valuable every year and would likely be dumped for a younger/prettier woman if your mate ever got enough money to attract one.
Not saying the system is great. But don’t even try to tell me that men get the bad end of the deal…
Assuming that they are bitches for wanting a man with money but to then turn around and say, “I am very lucky (or not) to be able to go out with stunning women” makes you sound a bit hypocritical. You can assume you should be able to date women who are stunning but they can’t have a standard that they should be able to date men with money?
On preview: What even sven said.
I think a women who responds with “Pretty Woman” being her favorite all time movie is quite possibly a red flag. There are a lot of charming romantic comedies out there that don’t have the whole “rich guy in a Porsche” aspect. But it might be worth digging a little - what makes Pretty Woman rank over Sleepless in Seattle or When Harry Met Sally. If she like Pretty Woman and You’ve Got Mail - where the hero is wealthy - and shuns Sweet Home Alabama or While You Were Sleeping - where Mr. Rich and Handsome gets dumped for Mr. Right - that might be a sign that “Happily Ever After” must involve a palace and servants.
If she has a thing for Julia Roberts and finds Notting Hill to be charming - even though Julia ends up with broke bookseller Hugh Grant - that is a different issue than “my life goal is to marry well.”
I think your opinions/perspectives are amazing. So glad this isn’t in Cafe. I’m digesting…
Women like Gone With the Wind now too. Pretty Woman does not necessarily reflect social attitudes today, and it’s possible for someone to love an older movie without wanting to live it out in real life. Some of them probably do, but I think most women are aware that movies are…movies.
I don’t think the content of a popular movie is meaningless, but if you’re going to read a lot into this then I have to say that there are things much worse than gold-digging to be found in many movies popular with men. As I said above, I’ve never seen Pretty Woman, but I’m pretty sure no one gets shot or stabbed to death in it and that no cars or buildings explode. These are quite common in male-oriented blockbuster action flicks.
Then movies popular with men demonstrate that a fair number of men are violent sociopaths with no regard for human life or other people’s property. See what fun this is?
*Gosh, where are my tissues. Maybe if you chose your girlfriends for reasons that were less shallow you’d wind up with women who were less shallow.
Sorry about your relationship problems, but I don’t think they had anything to do with Pretty Woman.
I don’t believe this is true for a second. We can judge people’s core characteristics based on the movies they enjoy? That’s absurd. I hate all of the movies you list. You’ve Got Mail is possible the worst movie ever made. But by your criteria, a person could point to my dislike of crap movies and conclude that I don’t believe in “Happily Ever After” or marrying “Mr. Right.” Said person could point to my enjoyment of Road House and conclude that I’m violent and stupid. Neither of those conclusions would be accurate.
If I enjoyed mystery/suspense movies and regularly watched Hitchcock films and old film noirs, could you reasonably conclude that I’m just trying to figure out the best way to kill a person and get away with it? A person who cites Pretty Woman as an all time favorite doesn’t send up a red flag any more than a person who enjoys movies like Ever After. Why is it such a shock that when you raise little girls on a steady diet of Cinderellas and Sleeping Beauties they grow up to enjoy fairy tales?
The movie is really charming. Julia was very much an ‘every girl’. She is not stunningly attractive. (except when she wears the red dress) and even then she is not, how to say it, untouchable.
The restaurant scene.
When she pops the snail off her plate and the waiter catches it and hides it behind his back is a great illustration. The waiter shielded her from embarrassment. He understood that this situation is unusual for her but he is pulling for her. He wants her to move into that world. Actually this bit wasn’t planned but there was a delay and Julia was in hair for a longer time and Marshall shot some asides with the wait staff to have something to do. When she came, then he had her shoot the snail shell off.
Lots of scenes have this charming stuff. Julia singing with the headphones on, and Hector is always charming in that role.
The movie is charming. It’s not a guide to life.
That’s why I said MIGHT. And you MIGHT want to do more digging. We do internalize our literature/media - and we do sometimes prefer literature/media that reflects our values.
It doesn’t mean every girl who likes “rich handsome prince saves me” movies is a gold digging bitch. And I’m sure there are women out there who are golddigging bitches whose favorite movie is Thelma and Louise.
And there are probably people whose favorite films feature excessive violence that are violent people. I’ve always found people who prefer horror to all other genres to be incompatible with me as people - they just have a different worldview than mine.
Sure people internalize what they watch and seek out entertainment that gives them some sort of pleasure–but the pleasure from a movie differs from person to person. What I object to is Philster’s theory that he can spot gold-digging bitches because he happened to date two women who left him and also enjoy Pretty Woman. They might be gold-digging bitches who wanted to find a sugar-daddy, or he might be a real asshole and they had the good luck to find guys who treat them better (NOTE: I am not call Philster an asshole. I don’t believe he is an asshole. I’m just throwing this out as an example of another possibility).
A woman might get pleasure from Pretty Woman because she thinks Richard Gere is attractive, or she enjoys Julia Roberts’ acting, or she finds the scenes Zebra mentioned to be charming, or she likes to mock the dumb storyline, or she loves movies set in Los Angeles, or she thinks the soundtrack is nice—there are dozens and dozens of possibilities.
I would say instead of looking to Pretty Woman as a red flag, people who want to know if their girlfriends are “gold digging bitches” should pay closer attention to what their girlfriends actually do and say.