Can you name three movies that involve men dressing up as women?
Tootsie.
Some Like It Hot.
Mrs. Doubtfire.
In all three of these movies, men dress up as women to get ahead in their work, try to win the lead woman along the way, and end up teaching us how women, and men, can Lean In!
Let's take the movie, Tootsie, first. Dustin Hoffman plays the lead character Michael Dorsey, who in order to earn more money and get a job, dresses up as a woman, Dorothy Michaels (see how they reversed her name?). In the movie, Michael is a headstrong, argumentative actor, who uses who he is to help differentiate his now female persona from the other somewhat wishy washy, stereotypical soap-opera female characters. Dorothy, irreverantly referred to as, Tootsie, by the story's director, models for the other women as well as the other women who she works with how to be a strong women who does not let men walk over her or treat her with disrespect.
In Tootsie and Some Like It Hot, the lead female characters, played by Jessica Lange and Marilyn Monroe, respectively, are similar to each other in that they both play women who are somewhat unsure of themselves, who think with their heart rather than their heads and who let men take advantage of them. The men in their lives, who they think are women, see this happening, and partly out of being the good "girlfriend" and their own interest in them, help these women to overcome their own self-reliance, and in the end, help them to Lean In. The lesson is that you can, you should and you will if you just believe in yourself...and this goes for the women and the men. By leaning in, you can overcome all obstacles and also save others along the way!
In the book Lean In, author Sheryl Sandburg asks women and men to look at the roles that we play in our work and in our personal lives, and examine them to see if we are "sitting at the table" and "leanning in" to the conversation, to the decision, as a leader, as a mentor and as a woman in a man's world. She suggests that not only do women not always lean in, they also are not often helping their fellow women to succeed. It is interesting to me that in these movies, men, dressed as women, pretending to be women, help the real women in the stories become stronger, and by the end of the movie, the men are stronger and more understanding too.
Take the character played by Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire, who becomes a nanny to get a job and be closer to his children. When faced with the fact that he will not be allowed to see his kids, and that in order to ever see them again, he has to be gainfully employed, he dons a wig, dress and a entirely new persona. By leaning in, Mrs. Doubtfire becomes something she can never be as a man, but the man behind the wig is changed too...and can learns to lean in to his own life.
The women in these movies learn to have higher expectations for men and expect respect...which unfortunately is completely underminded by the cross-dressing characters being found out to be men, and therefore losing all trust that was built in their friendships with the women. However, the men also learn that they have to treat women with respect, and that true friendship is more than just pretending to be interested, and after having been women, the men are surprisingly more understanding of the opposite sex.
So, in these movies, the men dress up as women and by leaning in teach the women who they have fallen for to lean in too! How do you lean in, and what lessons do you take from watching men do what the women have trouble doing in these films?
Tootsie, 1982 #69 on AFI's 100 Years 100 Movies, 10th anniversary list
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http://www.afi.com/100years/movies10.aspx
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