“All men and all women were perpetually in conflict because nature had set them up – or society had inspired them – with different goals… with women wanting sex after, and men before or without, marriage” (McDonald 38).
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In 1962, a book was published that would forever change the course of American culture and alter the perceptions of female sexuality. It was titled, simply, Sex and the Single Girl, by Helen Gurley Brown and showed that the wholesome, sweet “nice girls” of this country’s cities and towns “not only did it before and outside of wedlock but loved it, and were, just like men, entitled to obsess about it…” (Thurman 1). Although it came more than one decade after Alfred Kinsey’s controversial and thought-provoking publication “Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female” – when the country should have been thoroughly shocked at the idea of females having and loving sex – the book Sex and the Single Girl confirmed for many readers that the times were indeed changing, and the men would have to keep up.
No wonder then when a film came out two years later, loosely based on Brown and her book, it was also called Sex and the Single Girl. Natalie Wood portrays Helen Gurley Brown, in this incarnation a renowned psychologist who publishes a book to show what is true about women and their sex lives. Tony Curtis is Bob Weston, a writer for a “filthy rag” – perhaps intended to be a Playboy-esque sort of magazine, which itself had debuted a decade earlier – who intends to lure Brown into delving her secrets to sell copies. Along with Lauren Bacall and Henry Fonda, who play a couple on the verge of a breakup (or breakdown), a twisted game of masquerade and sexual seduction begins as Bob begins to fall for the beautiful and loveable Helen.
While Sex and the Single Girl does have it moments of screwball (is a ten-minute long car chase scene – complete with the stock film footage rolling behind the cars – really necessary?) it certainly has two of the three major themes of the sex comedy, as outlined by McDonald in Romantic Comedy.
First, much of the drama and comedic elements hinge on the persona that Bob takes on in order to lure Brown into a relationship. He pretends to be his neighbor Frank (played by Fonda) seeking advice on his marriage to Sylvia (Bacall) and relays the advice to him, but Bob seems intent on getting Brown to fall into bed with him to prove in his magazine article whether she has – or hasn’t. It is an age-old question asked by countless inexperienced teenagers: “Well, are you or aren’t you?” While the concept of virginity is easy to understand, what isn’t so uncomplicated are the connotations, negativity and general air of deficiency that seem to surround the word. It seems a bit strange that much of the movie’s mystery surrounds whether she has had enough experience in the sex department in order to write such a book, but this is later referenced by Helen fighting off advances and marriage offers from her co-worker Rudy. He is desperate to find out whether she is a virgin or not, because he’ll only marry her if she is – and if she isn’t then he claims “this evening is ruined”. She condemns the double standard that society holds women in, telling him that when she marries, it will not be “for love, sex or romance – I can get these outside marriage just as easily as you can! And I will insist on a right on all the love affairs I can have!” It is doubtful from her characterization that this is what she really wants, because she expresses several times over the course of the film, that she really wants to find a man she loves and cares for.
Second, there is a “hierarchy of knowledge”, in that he knows more than she does via the masquerade, and thus of course we know more than either of them, especially when Bob employs multiple “Sylvia”s to cover up his scam all while the real Sylvia heads to track down Helen to thank her for changing her husband. Occasionally, there is a hint of the inversion of the “natural order”, the third theme of the sex comedy, as occasionally it is the woman doing the chasing of the man. Other micro-tropes show up as well, like “tricks, insults and embarrassments; a set piece of an anti-marriage speech; and visual characteristics which include the apartment setting and glossy costumes” (McDonald 45). Not to mention no actual sex is shown on screen. Despite being called a sex comedy – even with the word sex in the title – the timing of publication as well as the targeted audience “ensures there is… very little actual sex” (McDonald 43). While it is implied that Bob has been having a relationship with Gretchen (Fran Jeffers) before meeting Helen, he never actually is shown to have had sex with either of them.
It seems strange to note that the book was published in 1962 and the film released in 1964, and yet neither seem impacted by the “decline” of the sex comedy. McDonald points to historical data to show that in the mid-1960s, the “idea of readily available reliable birth control [the Pill] made films based on the withholding or postponement of sex because of the implicit fear of unwanted pregnancy seem outmoded” (43). With the Pill and changing social norms, the classic struggle between the sexes became less focused on marriage and kids, and as McDonald suggests, shifted into the “radical romance comedy” of the 1970s onwards where the heroes and heroines of the story didn’t have to end up marry. The sex comedy could not survive the “new moral climate which no longer assumed ‘nice girls’ would insist on marriage before sex” (43). Of course, it should be noted that in Sex and the Single Girl, Bob and Helen do not end up actually married on screen, for the film fades out to their plane taking off into the skies. However, the suggestion seems to be – from Bob’s chasing of Helen, confession of his lies and the fact that he has started work at a more conservative, appropriate magazine – that this couple will go on to get married, maybe have children and live happily ever after. The womanizing serial dater and the naïve, perhaps inexperienced beauty give up their individual lifestyles for each other, and thus it comes down this: in the will-they-won’t-they battle of the sexes, marriage and conventionality has won, despite the unconventional notions set up by the film’s themes and real life inspiration.
However, there is one supporting character who showcases a future-forward, almost radical point-of-view, who is never criticized or shown in a negative light, and yet seems to be exactly the kind of girl Helen wishes to: Gretchen. Despite being Bob’s girlfriend during his chase of Helen, she appears often unusually indifferent to what is happening between the sexes. Bob and Gretchen are not married, and yet shown together several times that implies they are in a romantic relationship. When he asks her about her feelings about Helen’s book, she nonchalantly says “I don’t think I ever lived liked a single girl… I can’t remember that far back”. Later, when he asks her offhandedly about marriage, she says “I wouldn’t give up my career for marriage, kids or happiness!” And at the end, while she does seem to have a small change of heart and goes to help Bob get Helen, she seems fine with the whole thing. And she immediately starts looking for the next guy who will take her to Hawaii. Gretchen stands, perhaps, as the one character who has internalized Brown’s notion of being a single girl – truly on her own, with her own career and life, not getting tied done to one man – “I’d gladly be dominated by any man!”
Word count: 1,276
McDonald, Tamar Jeffers. Chapter 3: The Sex Comedy. Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre (Short Cuts). USA: Columbia University Press, 2007. Printed Excerpt.
Thurman, Judith. “Helenism.” The New Yorker. The New Yorker Magazine. 11 May 2009. Web. 2 August 2011.
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