Feminist Thoughts on ‘The House Bunny’

A few days ago, I rented a movie called The House Bunny:

And now half of my readers are wondering, “…Why, exactly?”

Well, I’ve always liked Anna Faris.  I thought she was funny in Scary Movie, I liked her in Lost in Translation, and I even sat through some of The Hot Chick when it was on TV because I saw she had a big part in it.  (I singled out Take Me Home Tonight as a movie I wouldn’t see in the theater, but I’ll enjoy it as a rental.)  I also suspected that the movie might be more feminist than it came across.

Okay, no, I didn’t.  I watched it just for Anna Faris.  She has a quality that draws me to her and makes me like her so, so much.  A different actress in this part would’ve made me roll my eyes, change the channel, and forget this movie existed.

Because I did watch it, I have feminist thoughts about it, and one thought about the comic aspect of the movie.  What’s in a makeover?  As a feminist, I have such mixed feelings about the “makeover” scene from a movie that always, always happens in a movie about a group of female misfits (and sometimes in movies about male misfits).  I hate that women are judged so harshly on what they dress and how they look.  At the same time, I know that I feel better about myself when I take a little more time to choose outfits or put on a hint of makeup, and Lord knows I love me some modcloth.com.  Sometimes I dress up because I want to impress others, but mostly, I do it for myself.  Having said all of tthat, I rather enjoyed the “makeover” aspect of this movie.  The sorority sisters first become completely dolled up into the “bunny” versions of themselves, but later, they decide that the overly sexy, overly made-up look doesn’t work for them, and they opt for more toned down versions of those makeovers.  You can see the difference in Kat Dennings’ character with the before, after, and after after pictures.  (The last picture is actually from Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, but her look is the same at the end of The House Bunny.)  I thought the second makeover was a nice way to handle the issue.  No, women’s issues with double standards and beauty aren’t going to be erased and solved forever at the end of a second makeover, but the movie is a comedy, and except in the case of dark comedies, issues are going to be wrapped up in a tiny bow by the end.  It’s part of the genre.

Female friendships are more important than anything…sort of.  The main plot revolves around the sorority sisters trying to get enough pledges so they can keep their charter and house.  That’s why they get makeovers in the first place.  They want to attract men so that other girls will want to spend time with them.  So, they’re trying to attract men, but their primary goal is to bring more women to them.  Except the only way they can get other women to want to be their friends…is to attract men.  My head hurts.  In the end, though, they manage to convince women to join their sorority because they have values of acceptance and tolerance, so the message is nice, if predictable.

To attract a man, change who you are…except not.  I’m still not sure how the jock character that Emma Stone crushed on turned out to be her perfect guy in the end, given that he didn’t seem smart enough for her and didn’t understand her reference to the Aztecs.  I guess he seemed to like her enough in the end, so yay?  Meanwhile, Colin Hanks is attracted to Anna Faris not because she’s hot in a bikini, but because she’s a genuinely kind person (and she is).  Yay!  But she can’t carry on a conversation with him because she’s been trained to think that men just want her to be a walking Playboy bunny.  Then, she tries to become smarter by reading, a lot, in a montage to a Yael Naim song.  But that doesn’t work, either.  By the end, he takes her out again so they can “start over,” and the epilogue reveals that they fell in love.  Well, that’s nice, but I don’t really buy it.

There were some truly inspired comic moments, none of which appeared in the trailer.  From the trailer, you’d think that the movie’s jokes were all about Anna Faris speaking in an Exorcist voice (which was funny) and misinterpreting people’s comments (not as funny after the fifteenth time).  But there was one running gag that really, really amused me.  As it turns out, Anna Faris wasn’t really kicked out of the Playboy Mansion.  A rival centerfold-wannabe and a male bartender at the Mansion wrote a letter in Hef’s name kicking her out.  The male bartender expresses guilt over this, and the rival centerfold responds by twisting his nipples.  I cringed, expecting a “woman abuses man and it’s funny!” joke, but instead, it turns out that the bartender loved this nipple-twisting and was completely under this woman’s power because she’s the only one who could do that to him!  Later, he fends off her advances by putting star-shaped pasties on his nipples and confessing all to Hef.  True, it’s another joke about a woman using sexual power to control a man, but it was so weird and unexpected and funny that I loved it, and I kind of wanted a whole movie just about the wacky exploits of the people living in the Playboy Mansion.