Saturday, July 21, 2007

Eye of the Beholder

In my continuing efforts to learn a new language that will be useful for my research, I have found that watching movies in this language to be a fun and effective way to keep my skills (such as they are) from eroding over the summer. Not long ago, I was watching one of these movies with some undergraduates (all female, by the way) with whom I took a language class last year, and they all agreed that a particular character was ‘really old’ and therefore they did not approve of his relationship with a younger female character. I was surprised at their reaction -- he didn’t look very old to me. I argued that in fact he was a very attractive man, but I was alone in this opinion. The male character has some gray hair! He has wrinkles by his eyes! Later, I searched online to find a biography of the actor, and discovered that he is exactly my age. I guess that proves it then – he clearly can’t be old..

We all agreed, however, that a different male character, who had recently become engaged, was in fact not ready to get married. The proof: he had large posters of cars and motorcycles on the walls of his bedroom. Perhaps this particular opinion transcends a woman’s age.

4 comments:

heidi said...

Great blog. I look forward to reading more-Interesting topics and ideas.

Do you mind if I link your blog with mine?

Anonymous said...

And what would they say if it was an older *woman* together with a younger man? Is that imaginable at all? Okay, not for Hollywood.

Why can the grey-haired guys always get the good-looking sweet-young-things and older women get, well, nothing? Cause the guys their age are looking for younger things and the young guys don't see them?

Female Science Professor said...

As it turns out, this actor/character is not nearly so old as the students thought he was, and therefore not nearly so much older than his beloved in the movie (or in real life). He has a hint of gray hair at his temples, but that was enough for these 17-23 year olds to decide he was ancient!

Anonymous said...

Rene Russo? Geena Davis?