2
writer Mimi Swartz (2004) wryly notes, You know, if you’re a 28-32-year-old
Hollywood studio executive, it probably is a stretch to think that anybody wants to see a
bunch of 56-year-old women naked in a movie.
ii
Studio executives defend their decisions by charging that female audiences can’t
“open” a picture, that is, can’t draw large crowds on the opening day of the film, which is
viewed by the film business as crucial to whether a film will ultimately be profitable or
not. As Amy Pascal, Chairwoman of Columbia Pictures, has commented, “Women don’t
open pictures, older, younger, in-between. No, they don’t.”
iii
While conventional wisdom holds that female audiences don’t open films, some
recent films have directly challenged this long-held supposition. These films include the
recent The Banger Sisters (2002), Under the Tuscan Sun (2003), Something’s Gotta Give
(2003), and Calendar Girls (2003). All of these films, in addition to providing a central
female character, celebrate older women’s sexual re-awakening. One reason these
positive films about middle-aged female sexuality are finally being made is that a few
voices in Hollywood, mostly female themselves, have successfully argued that an older
female demographic is a viable niche audience.
iv
While these films offer a welcome departure from the preponderance of films
with male themes, other recent films portraying middle-aged women end up playing into
the worst stereotypes of middle-aged female sexuality as somehow deviant and inimical
to the interests of the family. In these films, which range from the controversial film
Thirteen (2003) to the more standard woman’s “weepie,” Anywhere But Here (1999), to
even the ‘tween comedy Freaky Friday (2003), the older female’s sexuality is portrayed
Convention