Lookie! Ah Made Mahself A Bay-Bay! or, "Girl Power!"

The Wench professes that she is annoyed with the central conceit of Waitress, which she recently viewed on DVD. The central conceit being: motherhood as salvation, the mother-child bond as all-nourishing and all-fulfilling.

Kerri Russell's character, the "Waitress" of the title, insists that she does not want her baby throughout the course of her pregnancy. In a letter to her unborn child, she reveals that she thinks very little of most people, and that she feels ambivalent bringing her into such a cold, mediocre world.

Yet the moment her newborn daughter is placed into her arms, Russell does a complete 360. She goes from being a cowering, abused wife to telling her evil hick husband to stick it where the sun don't shine. She abruptly breaks off an affair with a doctor who ostensibly was the only one who took interest in her or made her feel at all meaningful. All this before she's even wheeled out of the hospital. And all this, because all she needs is her bay-bay.

Balderdash, says The Wench. Where's the post-partum depression? The engorged breasts? Hell, where's the extra pregancy pounds? Where's the mind-blowing stress and strain of caring for an infant as a single, self-employed mother?

The Wench is also peeved that yet another female protagonist falls for yet another gainfully employed male. We've seen so many doctor and lawyer love interests (yet sadly, no Indian Chiefs), underscoring that a man's chief attraction to a woman is his earning power. Oh, yes -- and his ability to see the real woman behind the waitress/ugly chick/prostitute.

On to other films dealing with unplanned pregancy: The Wench confesses to being puzzled by recent claims that Knocked Up is sexist for portraying women as demanding and shrill. The character Debbie was indeed an angry, anxiety-ridden shrew, but no more so than many post-feminist wives and mothers The Wench has observed. These are women whose husbands work demanding jobs so that they have the privilege of staying at home with their chidlren, yet insist on splitting household chores evenly for the sake of "fairness".

How fair is it, The Wench asks, to expect one's husband to come home after a long day of sales calls/surgery/depositions and clean up? And really, why must Debbie's character insist on her husband buying "pink cupcakes" or otherwise participating in child-rearing to an equal extent as she?

The Wench suggests that Debbie and other women of her ilk do as all other women with small children have: run to the shrink and procure a scrip for Paxil, Wellbutrin or similar anti-anxiety drug. Surely, that "Waitress" will at some point -- and if she's lucky, her psychiatrist will be cute and charming and pie-loving, to boot.