Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

26 Nov 2012, 6:14 a.m.

"The barroom Benzedrine standards of this megalomaniac society"

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2012 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Wow, All About Eve is quite a ride. Multiple interesting women, hella quotable lines, and even a glimpse of how lax and friendly airport security used to be.

There's a much-quoted speech one main character gives, thinking about femininity and ambition, and I don't agree with all of it, but this bit resonates:

That's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted.

Yep. And if anyone knows about that particular labor and about performing femininity, it's the women in this movie.

Comments

Jed
http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/
28 Nov 2012, 13:51 p.m.

...And now I finally know that All About Eve is not the same as The Three Faces of Eve.