I’ve been feeling pretty sickly, so I’ve spent the day laying in bed and watching Doris Day movies. I feel so incredibly girly, singing along to ‘kay sera sera’ and hoping against hope she’ll finally win over the guy. I get wrapped up in all of it, even though in the back of my mind I’m realizing why I was never a fan of Doris Day movies when I was a kid – she’s so passive aggressive! Always apologizing even though the guy’s being a complete turd, always placating to his piggish ways cause she’s the lowly woman and he the All-Powerful Patriarchal Male. And yet despite all this, I still find myself hoping she’ll marry the guy, while the other half of me is hoping that she’ll kick him to the curb for being such a controlling chauvinist jerk.

    I made the mistake of watching ‘The Thrill of It All’ as my first Doris Day movie, and that one really bugged me. There was no hoping going on whatsoever that she’d forgive her clod of a husband. In that movie, she plays the housewife of an obstetrician (danger, Will Robinson, danger!), and she suddenly gets hired to be the spokeswoman for the Happy Soap company. Naturally “hilarity” ensues as we watch poor Beverly Boyer (Doris Day) deal with her home that’s falling apart and her cranky husband who’s completely unwilling to help around the house. Apparently Mr. Boyer believes that having a male anatomy prevents him from changing a diaper or making allowances for his wife who is now bringing home more bacon than he is.

    The movie ends with Mrs. Boyer giving in to her overly disapproving and negative husband’s wishes and she returns home to her children and big baby of a husband. While I completely applaud and encourage women who stay home with their children when they choose to, I don’t agree with men pressuring their wives into such roles. It should be a woman’s choice, not indentured servitude.

    Granted, we could get into a huge debate about, “She chose to have children, she should care for them.” While to some degree I agree with that, what really irked me about that movie was the behavior of the husband and how Doris Day’s character just completely gave into it. She started feeling guilty about her husband’s behavior! The nerve! And all she was doing was working a few nights a week!

    Okay, I’ll wrap this up before I go off on a rant about gender stereotypes and women’s rights. Suffice it to say, I watched ‘The Glass Bottom Boat’ this afternoon and was surprised and delighted to see that she had a bit more gumption into her character than in the other Doris Day movies I’ve seen. Still, I don’t understand why she still got married to Rod Taylor after he said she had no brains, but I’ll try through gritted teeth to ignore that. It’s still not as good as ‘Young at Heart’, but that’s purely because Frank Sinatra’s in it and he’s oh so loveable even when he is playing a depressed suicidal musician. (Now that’s something you don’t see in a Doris Day movie every day!)

    On another only slightly related note, while watching the opening titles to ‘Glass Bottom Boat’, I couldn’t help but giggle when I realized the typeface was so familiar – Spongebob Squarepants uses the same typeface! I love it! (And how geeky am I that I not only recognized a typeface, but that it was related to Spongebob? I feel SO intelligent…)

    And now I’m off to watch ‘Please Don’t Eat the Daises.’ Oh the pure technocolored 60’s joy of it all!