Feminine Hygiene: Anna Faris, A New Yorker Article, and Some Feminist Ire

This photo of Anna Faris is either from one of the Scary Movies or a romantic comedy, but the scariest thing is that it works equally well for both.

I like Anna Faris-somehow I survived an entire Scary Movie and concluded that she was the best part of it -but her recent New Yorker profile ("Funny Like a Guy: Anna Faris and Hollywood's Image Problem") has me confused about whether I want her to succeed or not. Sisterhood is powerful, but bitterness lasts forever. Especially the bitterness of wishing, for once, that having "guys want to nail her" would not matter if a woman wants to do comedy.

A "leading agent" tells that to the writer on page 54, and the entire article is full of sad, sad quotes like that one. It should be news to none of you that women- even attractive, white, straight, thin blonde women with breast implants like Faris- do not rule Hollywood. But in this article, that situation is presented so starkly that it left me wanting a drink, matches for my DVD collection, and a good book to read before the cops came to arrest me for arson.

Also notable: Keenan Ivory Wayans's belief that what holds women back from being funny is their innate vanity, because "If Will Ferrell is a girl, and she's got a belly and a hairy back, she's not running down the street naked." Actually, Keenan, if I may pipe up... I'm no Hollywood insider, but I don't think that's what's stopping hairy, fat women from running down the street to the box office bank. Rather it's the legion of American assholes who would surely rise uponce she did, to complain about how she had the audacity to kill their boners.

Which brings me to my least-favourite part of the article, a part I have termed "The Magical Slut Number." For most of the profile, Faris is shown wrapping up What's Your Number?, a romantic comedy and (the article hints) hopefully her big, international break-out role. In the film, a woman reads an article in Marie Claire that says anyone who's slept with more than some arbitrary number of guys will never get married. Unfortunately, she's at that limit. Thus, the plot: tracking down randoms in order to find Mr. Right, ignoring that he's actually right down the hall. God knows, like all women, I conduct every facet of my life in accordance with a magazine with lower circulation than Cosmo.

But what would that arbitrary number be? According to New Regency's Hutch Parker "We thought, would twenty guys be too many for the audience to relate to her?... But if you take that number down- and we though about fifteen, or even twelve- it makes the film less bold." The Magic Slut Number! Too low, and you're not wild enough! Too high, and you scare people. Now, some might say that 20 is not that high of a number for a woman in her thirties. After all, femininity embraced Sex and the City, where even uptight Charlotte probably got her ticket punched more than 20 times in five seasons, much less one lifetime. And New Regency would probably say back to you that you're the kind of dirty whore they don't want in the movie theatre anyway.

At least there was one benefit to reading this article. If some guy ever says to me that the whole "Stud/Slut" double standard does not exist, and is only something angry women bring up while drunk at parties (as I do believe Chuck Klosterman stated, in some form, in Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs), I have ammunition. "Twenty," I will yell, "TWENTY." And then I will mutely point to Anna Faris's face on a bus stop poster.