As a girl, I always find myself being caught up in the stereotype of girl+movie=chick flick. Indeed, nearly all my guy friends assume that because I am a chick, I must therefore love chick flicks. I even find myself stereotyping girls of my own gender into that category, and I’m not often wrong in my assumptions. Don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly acceptable for girls to enjoy that particular breed of movie; I’m just not one of them. However, because so many girls love the scenario of guy meets girl, then they fall in love and get married, blah, blah, blah, the chick flick industry makes quite the killing.

After those brief thoughts on the stereotypes of girls and movies, the obvious thought of chick flick passes through my mind when I think of a movie directed by a woman. Indeed, I will take for example “The Holiday” which was directed by Nancy Meyers, a woman. Going into the movie; I said to myself “Jessica, this is probably going to be a chick flick, so brace yourself”. I was not disappointed. I’m not saying the movie was bad, but it did follow the chick flick guidelines to the t. Girl meets guy, they fall in love, they didn’t get married, but that was definitely a future option for the two couple involved.

Yet in the process of watching and reflecting on our assigned movies, I thought of some questions regarding that girlie stereotype. Do girl directors always make chick flicks? Do we as women simply have a softer set of emotions in general than men? Causing us to want to the watch warm fuzzy love movies, over the sci-fi death movies of our opposing gender? Or do women (such as Nancy Meyers), simply accept the consumer girl’s need for nice thoughts into a cash crop? Or do guys simply have too much pride to admit that they too like nice, lovely, and kind movies? My brother certainly refused to see “Marie Antoinette” with me!