GI Jane

I just watched the last thirty minutes of G.I. Jane, really the only part of the movie worth watching...well, probably not, but it's the part of the movie I like best. I don't know why this movie did so poorly, it's actually pretty good. Maybe it was because there was Demi Moore burnout at the time. I do know that a lot of soldiers seem to like this movie. I'm not sure why!

I am clearly not enough of a feminist to think that being a Navy Seal would be a really cool thing. Well, actually it would be a cool thing, it just wouldn't be cool to have to go through what you have to go through to be one. And I wonder how many women really are up to it. In the part of the movie where Demi's character has to run out and save Viggo's character (who of course has been treating her like dirt throughout the training), it looks to me like she really has to struggle to drag his body a couple of feet. Would a man have had that problem? Could a guy have just picked him up? And then another guy has to come and help her get him to the helicopter. So what if they had been alone?

I think this is a tough question. On the one hand, I do think women should be allowed the same opportunities as men but on the other hand I wonder if the standards are altered to allow for a woman's lesser body strength. Women are certainly as mentally tough as men, probably tougher, that's without question. But we are just not as strong. So is it really right to have different standards, to lower the bar. I say no.

And before that scene, when the two of them are scouting out the "extract" zone and run into the border patrol, the guy shoots the soldier who's about to discover Demi and of course that brings everyone running...it seems as if he did it because he thought she wasn't going to be able to take him. The point is probably supposed to be that he was wrong, he should have had confidence in her ability to handle the situation. But what if she couldn't have? in real life, he'd probably have been blamed if she had ended up dead because she wasn't strong enough physically to deal with this enemy soldier. I know if it had been me, I would presumably have had the "head' know-how to deal with the situation but probably not the physical capability to pull it off.

You can't call it equality if the standards are different, if the expectations are calibrated to match the capabilities.