The Moooovies

Yesterday, a couple of friends and I went to The Devil Wears Prada, and I left the movie entertained and actually chilly in the 90-degree Minnesota heat. Nothing wrong with that. But my liberal bleeding heart had some thoughts I’d like to share. First, I’ll point out that I fully realize saying the words “fashion” and “Rox” in the same sentence would usually involve an oxymoron. But yes, Rox chose a movie about the fashion industry. So, taking that into consideration, my thoughts:

To me, the Andrea character looked quite well put together and perfectly adorable in the interview outfit her peers at the magazine laughed at. And when she was called fat for wearing a size 6, as a woman who believes my body looks its best at about a 14, don’t get me started. But maybe that’s because I haven’t seen myself in anything smaller since junior high, and then just barely smaller.

I think the majority of women are hip to the lies in this movie, and I understand that’s the point of the story. It only takes Andrea a short time with the vacuous, evil Miranda, the predictable screwing-over of a co-worker and her friends, and a startling glimpse at her boss sans make up and perfectly coiffed hair momentarily crying over a divorce, to go crawling back to her regular clothes, her sweet boyfriend, and a job at a newspaper. All’s well that ends well.

I did have to wonder, though, if Miranda’s lecture about the cluelessness of women who pride themselves on not caring about fashion was supposed to invite us to dip into the Koolaid. Her pointing out that decisions made by designers in the world of high fashon trickle down to the racks in department stores and become sucked up by the grateful masses was lost on me. What she left out, no doubt due to her own cluelessness, were the prayers of the proles who page through Vogue in the dentist’s office, hoping that what we’ll find invading the racks in “our stores” in a year or two will be anything at all that’s comfortable and wearable, as in made of fabrics that don’t make us squirm with itchiness or cuts that don’t bind at our generous hips.

And speaking of squirming, the scene in which Andrea’s friend gratefully snatches up the Marc Jacobs freebie also got to me. Sure, I’d happily take a free designer handbag, if it were tossed my way, and if that makes me a hypocrite, so be it. But I think it was at this point in the movie that the price of these things was mentioned. By my math-challenged calculations, if women who actually pay for these things were willing to forgo just one adrenaline rush that comes from such an acquisition, they could buy something like SEVENTY of the $20 bags my supermarket offers for donation to our area food shelf. SEVENTY!!! Sure, sure, I realize there’s no telling how much money these fashionistas may already be donating to charity, unbeknownst to me, but I can’t get over the idea that there are a hell of a lot of bags of groceries sitting on shelves in the California Closets of America’s McMansions- wow!

Not to get all hoity-toity, but has anyone noticed that the movies in “mainstream” theaters these days are mostly, well….boring? Now I realize it isn’t practical for the five-screen theater in Cambridge, Minnesota, to cater to a select group of film fanatics, but I certainly don’t consider myself to be one of those. I’m having a lot more fun sharing a Netflix subscription with my friend Heidi and trading discs and conversation about what we find there. But heck, it’s good to get out and see something on the big screen, and even better to play the critic here. Go see this movie, and let me know what you think.