Paining

Ayer, half-napping, directly after an episode of Tiny and Toya (which, I've now realized is about the mother of Tip's bebes--jealousy, anguish and admiration), I watched Waiting to Exhale. I'd never seen it, though I was familiar with a few key scenes from...I Love the 90's? Angela Basset setting her scoundrel (white-lady-loving) husband's suits on fire inside of a BMW sedan. (The incomparable) Loretta Devine offering up a plate of cookedfood to Gregory Hines.

The film is strange. It's set in Arizona (whaaaa?). And, typically, while the four principles, Devine, Basset, Ms. Whitney Houston, and Ms. Mike Tyson, are meant to be a unit of gal'friends, the actual links drawn between them are flimsy, the editing scatter-brained, the writing puerile. The thing is this: its view of women's love lives is dark. Crackheads, underminers, and, almost universally, other people's husbands. Truly, in the course of the movie, 3 out of the 4 heroines are involved with one or more married men. This is all well and good for spring chickens like us, but for women-of-a-certain-age, who really want to settle down and make babies and run errands, it's pure tragedy, the pits. But is it accurate? Are married boyfriends standard for thirty-something singles? Or is Waiting to Exhale simply a relic of 1995, a testament to how uncomfortable Hollywood was with non-traditional trajectories (like late marriage) for women? Whatever the case, I did feel there was a distinct sexism dotting the story, a sexism distinct from the present brand, one that felt more "Eisenhower" than "Girls Gone Wild." It's quite something how much cultural ground has been covered even within our wee quarter century of experience. This guy totes does it justice: