Gender Roles In “She’s The Man”
Ada Lambert | November 20, 2024
When I was a preteen and Netflix still had a DVD system, my dad would let me rent whatever I wanted and then pirate the disk. I know, I know, that is illegal. Even I knew that at the ripe age of 10. But, that meant I could rewatch movies as much as I wanted, and one of my favorites was “She’s the Man.”
Last weekend my roommates and I watched it, and that was probably the first time I have seen the movie since my preteen years. There are a lot of things to consider when thinking about “She’s The Man,” and while I would still classify this as a fun, satirical camp film, there are aspects of the story that are outdated, especially regarding gender.
If you have not seen the movie, let me give you the premise: teen girl Viola loves to play soccer, despite her debutante-obsessed mother Her twin brother who also plays soccer, Sebastian, is a musician on the down low. After Viola’s team is cut due to funding, she begs the coach to let her play on the men’s team, to which he laughs in her face. Real nice! So Viola mopes on home where she finds Sebastian halfway out the window on his merry way to London for his band’s tour. That is when the lightbulb flashes in her head — she would impersonate Sebastian at his bougie private school, whose team is her high school’s number one competitor.
Viola flees her mother’s home, and as a child of divorce, claims she is going to her dad’s house. She then has her friends “transform” her into her brother, which might I say was not very convincing, but then again, anything goes in a rom-com from the 2000s. She gets to the boarding school and miraculously upholds her identity as a boy, though not very convincingly at times. She meets Duke, her roommate (who is Channing Tatum? Kind of forgot about that), and as she gets to know him, realizes he is a “sensitive boy who respects women.” Ahem — we all know that trope — but anyway, Viola (still posing as Sebastian) starts to like him, but he likes this girl named Olivia, and Olivia…well, Olivia likes Viola-Sebastian, who she regards as a genuine and sweet boy, unlike any she has met.
With this love triangle in action, there are a lot of queer-coded storylines, though in the end there are no canon queer couples (much to my dismay.) But, what stood out to me was both Duke and Olivia’s interest in Viola as a boy — especially Olivia, because it is clear that she is attracted to Viola-Sebastian primarily based on personality. Despite Viola-Sebastian’s efforts to act manly, she often can talk to Olivia on a more sentimental level because she does not have as much of a need to prove her masculinity. If this film went the way I wanted it to, Olivia and Viola would have ended up together. But sadly, it goes as you would expect. Viola and Duke get together and Olivia meets the real Sebastian, whom she accepts as the male counterpart of Viola, and goes to the debutante ball with him. Boo.
This movie has been criticized for its views on gender — making no effort to recognize trans and non-binary identities — and further, promoting stereotypical roles amongst men and women. In trying to prove herself as a “real man,” Viola has her friends come to a parlor where Duke and his friends are at, where she is approached by three separate women (one of which was not planned) and she is putting on this irresistible persona, but it just comes off as a backward interpretation of how men act.
In another scene, Viola — dressed up in her mother’s best dress — and Olivia are on the stand for the kissing both with a long line of drooling boys waiting for their turn. I know that kissing booths aren’t that taboo but it is gross regardless. In the climax of the movie, the Dean learns from a snitch (Sebastian’s crazy girlfriend) that Viola is impersonating him. But, perfectly enough, Sebastian arrives home a day early and is thrown out onto the field for the big game against Viola’s school. When the Dean goes to confront Sebastian — in the middle of the game I might add — he essentially asks for proof, in which Sebastian reveals his… ya know. This is a strange moment because it is like, “I swear I’m a man, look I have a penis!” Hence the outdatedness.
But despite this, the narrative also, at times, challenges these stereotypes by shifting from the perspective of Viola as a woman and Viola as Sebastian. As a “man,” she is treated differently than when she is a woman, and the movie showcases how men interact with each other when there are no women present. The decisions on how to represent gender in this movie are strange and sometimes contradictory, but I think that if you watch with a modern perspective on gender and the binary, you can make up your mind about what message the movie is trying to send.
I love this movie, though I do feel it could have had a more progressive plot. I think it still has something important to say for gender and sexuality, and if you are into camp movies that are queer-coded, then you should give it a chance.