136 Us Women Need a Bad Body to Make Us Angels
Marissa Vargas
Recently, I made my boyfriend go see a new romance movie with me. The movie is called After, which is based off an adult fiction novel series with the same name, After. I admit, yes I did read this problematic, cliche but yet-so-enticing series back in High School, so it was only a right of passage for me to go see the movie adaptation. The movie is about a freshman in college, Tessa who embarks on her first journey alone and moves to a college where she knows absolutely no one. Tessa is a goody-two-shoes who stays in on Friday nights to study with her Old Navy poster child boyfriend, Noah. Tessa is what one may consider perfect, due to her upbringing of her very cold, and perfect mother. Once Tessa sets out for her new journey in life, she meets a new man, Hardin Scott. He is actually the poster child for a bad boy. Of course, Tessa finds him annoying and rude but, Hardin uses his douchebag charm to lure her in. ….How can one resist this smug face? Tessa cannot for sure.
Fast forward and Tessa and Hardin are in a complicated relationship where he is moody and unable to communicate his feelings due to his personal demons. Then we have Tessa who starts to step out of her shell, live her life a little, and even ruin her relationship with her mother because of her relationship with Hardin.
We can already see how this relationship is problematic; Tessa becomes Hardin’s emotional punching bag, but still sticks around. She allows it to happen because she “loooooves” him and he brings out a side of her that she’s never seen before. This is where I am going to start getting all critical theory and analyzing this film through a feminist lens.
Tessa succumbs to Hardin’s level and allows herself to become his emotional punching bag, taking him back every time he messes up. Tessa as a woman in today’s society feels the need to fix him and stay with him. After all, it is a woman’s duty to cater to her man’s needs. (sarcasm) Rivkin and Ryan discuss this ideology of women within a patriarchal society, “For the women’s movement of the 1960s and early 1970s the subject of feminism was women’s experience under patriarchy, the long tradition of male rule in society which silenced women’s voices, distorted their lives, and treated their concerns as peripheral” (Rivkin and Ryan 765). Women were put on this unrealistic pedestal to cater to men and be the perfect “Angels” for them. No man would ever want a woman who did not benefit his ego or emotional needs. So of course, Hardin wants her. We see this exact idea/theory play out in one particular scene where Hardin throws a huge fit because some other guy showed an interest in Tessa. He goes on a drinking binge and destroys his father’s mansion, only for Tessa to run to his insecure a** and comfort him. Yet again, she is the angel. But what is this “angel” I keep mentioning? Well, let me tell you.
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar wrote a beautifully written e