A Woman's Dream and Men's Desire

Assalamualaikum,

I watched "The Stepford Wives" at TV2 last night. IT's a story about Joanna Eberhart, a successful television executive who got fired after her latest project resulted with shooting incident. Suffering a nervous breakdown, she and her husband, Walter, move into a small and beautiful town called Stepford in Connecticut.

Stepford, apart from having awesome scenery, is a home of a weird community. The wives spend their time at Stepford Daily Spa and the men spend their time at Stepford Men's Assocciation --- all day! The weirdest should be the wives [it's Stepford wives, after all]. They were all, like Joanna quoted, like air stewardess, or like a doll; they were ideal housewives and perfect ladies. These wives were apparently half robotic with nano chips in their brain and tailored specifically for the husbands' standard. At the end of the story it was discovered that Claire is the mastermind for the stepfordization of the wives. She was emotionally hurt by her husband's love affair and determined to create an ideal love-family community.

First, I am not surprise on what drive Claire to do that. Never hurt a woman with love, for the madness resulted from it is terminal. When it comes to love, women always surprises the world, women can do so many unthinkable things out of love --- good or bad. After Claire caught her husband with her research assistant at their home, she killed him. We are very passionate creature.

Stepford is a woman's dream, Claire's dream. She built a robot similar to her husband, Mike, with all the good value she dreams of from a guy. Her idea of Stepford is to be a place where men and women can live lovingly forever. It's a place where women got to do what they love doing, so does the men. Well, actually it's what Claire love doing. She did mention about laces, dancing, decorating house... all of girl's stuff. Need to mention here, Claire was a very brilliant neurosurgeon. But beyond all the intellectuals she has, all she wants to do is to love a guy and be the woman he loves, so much.

The husbands in Stepford, they were married to highly intelligent women. Now these guys feel overshadowed and insecure by their wives' achievement. So they change the wives into computer programmed wives, Stepford Wives that they can control with a single click. They'd rather have these Stepford Wives to accompany them --- no question asked only orders followed. This is men's desire. Most of them would not admit it, but they prefer a weaker companion to make them feel confident about themselves. We are moving forward 21st century, but some men still stuck few centuries back where women can't do more than men.

I met women and men like them (in the movie) everyday. They are among us. I remember Mak advising me not to pursue too high on education or career for that might frightened guys and I'll end up unmarried. I think that is ridiculous. Even if I hold the highest educational recognition, even if I am at the top of my career, I am still a woman. I'd not have extra brains out of my skull [Daa!] I have one question to the Stepford husbands: didn't they realize that they are proposing to an intelligent woman? and why can't they love an intelligent wife just like when they were dating her?

Is it fair for us women to have to pay a high price just because we are destined with intelligence?

Wassalam.