I cried all the way through A Star Is Born. When the credits rolled and the lights came up, I turned around to see a cinema full of women wiping their eyes, blowing their noses and hugging their friends. It’s a great movie, for lots of reasons, and one of them is that it’s a good old fashioned weepie.
The weepie goes by many names: sentimental film, melodrama, soap opera, “woman’s film”, tear-jerker, and, now, “chick flick”. They emerged in the 1930s as a way for studios to reach women audiences, and they did this by telling unashamedly sentimental stories with strong female protagonists. Women still love these movies. But, why?
Weepie romance/dramas are not just for the ladies. Credit:Warner Bros
Academics have been looking at this seriously since the mid-eighties, when Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance questioned whether women were just passively reading romance novels and uncritically absorbing their simple messages, or whether they were in fact engaging in a more sophisticated way, where reading these books was less straightforward wish-fulfilment and more a space for them to see themselves and what they wanted, not just from men but from their own lives.
Kate Cuthbert, managing editor of Escape Publishing, agrees. She observes “there is no other genre where women are consistently framed as the point of reference and allowed to be successful protagonists of their stories” and links this to its popularity among women.
I ask her why men only make up roughly 10 per cent of the romance reading public. She explains that, frequently, “they have no practice in relating to characters that act as windows rather than mirrors".
"It’s uncomfortable and requires empathy and patience, and men, so very often reflected in the culture around them, do not know how to enter into a fictional (or otherwise) world where they do not hold the place of power," she says.
Men are accustomed to seeing aspirational archetypes of themselves reflected back at them, or highly idealised versions of what they wish to be.
It’s not like men don’t like to watch extremely emotional and heart-wrenching stuff. Give me a dollar for every man whose favourite movie is The Shawshank Redemption and I’ll never have to work again. But there are generally acceptable ways in which it’s okay for men to be upset, to be heartbroken, to cry their eyes out.
The clichés exist for a reason: men can cry when their dog dies, when their football team loses (or wins) and at their mother’s funeral. Maybe at their wedding. Possibly when their children are born. The narrow fields of permission are slowly becoming broader. But, when it comes to movies, men might be “allowed” to cry in Saving Private Ryan but not in Beaches. They can admit to loving “chick flicks” but only with a nod, a wink and a “ssshhh don’t tell anyone lol”.
The irony, of course, is that what is traditionally termed “men’s entertainment” is awash with melodrama, sentimentality and heightened emotion. Sporting contests, war movies, even idiotic pastimes like betting on horses are wildly emotional undertakings where tears are permitted, along with yelling, screaming, crying, hugging, and other extreme expressions of celebration or commiseration.
So why aren’t men supposed to like stories about romantic love? Why is romance “for girls”?
It’s a weird idea, when you drill down into it. Because looking at our pop culture landscape, you get the impression that falling in love is a pretty big deal. And while plenty of women fall in love with other women, a big chunk also fall in love with men.
Men have beautiful love affairs. They fall hopelessly in love. They propose and get married. They have long, enduring love stories that absolutely light up their lives. A lot of them with women. So, why aren’t they allowed to enjoy that liberating, thrilling feeling of falling headlong into a romance that rips their heart out and leaves them howling big fat happy tears?
Young adult romance novelist Emma Grey says she knows of plenty of men who enjoy a love story.
“We all need somewhere to escape that demands nothing more from us than a belief in love and magic and fun. I've lost count of the number of male friends who read my teen romance novel about a boy band and got in touch to say they're obviously 'not the target audience' but they were surprised how much they loved the story. To which I say: Why can't they be the target audience? A lot of men are just as romantic as a lot of women."
Of course they are! The thing about rigid, prescriptive gender roles is that they rob all of us of our chance at a full humanity. So while women are told they can’t truly understand things like video games, rock music, or sports, men are likewise told not to enjoy things like dancing, fashion and big-hearted love stories.
Women love watching movies like A Star Is Born because it feels good to feel – it’s a huge release, it’s good for our bodies and our brains, and when the tears have dried, we might even think about how it relates to our own lives, feelings and relationships. Women understand these films because we already have empathy, but they’re also one of the ways women learn it in the first place. Rather than being naturally good at emotional labour, we actually work hard at it, and learn along the way how to read other people’s needs and desires.
Wouldn’t it be great if men did this too? For their own sake as much as for the women in their lives. Because you know what everybody needs sometimes? A great big bloody cry.
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