According To Anne Hathaway’s Career: Do Women REALLY Need Men In Their Lives?

Anne Hathaway is a force to be reckoned with. She has a brand new movie streaming on Amazon Prime which screams rave reviews and overall success with 50 million viewers who watched in the first two weeks. This makes it Amazon Prime’s most successful movie of all time. And again, just like always, it was referred to as a rom-com, and we’ve established in the previous two blog posts that ‘The Idea Of You’ is NOT a romantic comedy. So instead of calling it a rom-com, we’ll call it a romantic drama. This romantic drama was made by a woman and was based on a fan faction novel about Harry Styles of One Direction. If you’re someone who ever degraded the art of fan fiction, maybe you should rethink everything you ever thought you knew or didn’t know about it.

I’ve been a fan of Anne Hathaway since the very beginning. It’s hard to believe how long ago she’s been on my screen. And now with ‘Devil Wears Prada’ being on Netflix, I watch her on my screen practically every day. For the most part, it’s because my 1 year old toddler is a huge fan of the movie. He drools just within the the first minute of the movie’s montage with the beautiful women (and Hathaway) getting ready for work, and he gets so excited when the movie gets to the ending scene in Paris when it’s revealed that Meryl Streep’s character, Miranda, screwed everyone over in order not for her not to lose her position at Runway Magazine.

My two all-time favourite Anne Hathaway performances are ‘Love & Other Drugs’, where she played Maggie, a woman who was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease and is going through the hardships and tribulations of the first stages of the symptoms while simultaneously unintentionally falling in love, and ‘Modern Love’ an Amazon Prime original series where she plays Lexi, a woman struggling with Bipolar Disorder. She never tells anyone and suffers in silence. One minute she’s on such a high she feels like she’s the main character in a musical. Other days she’s on such a low that she can’t get off the bathroom floor. And because she suffers in silence, her life falls apart. The episode shows her meeting a nice, young man at a supermarket during her high. He asks her out, and she’s excited for it. She’s even excited to get ready for it. But as she does, her Bipolar kicks in and she collapses into her lowest of the lows. Of course, the date doesn’t go as planned and she never sees the nice man that took her out ever again. Things don’t go well at work as well, and eventually, she gets fired. As she’s about to leave, her co-worker asks her to come out with her for a cup of coffee, and that’s where Lexi opens up about her struggles with Bipolar for the first time ever in her life. She felt relieved, and she saw that her (former) co-worker) didn’t run away as soon as she told her, so that was when she made changes in her life that made it easier for her to get through her days and manage her Bipolar.

Anne Hathaway’s talent is immeasurable. She certainly puts so much work onto every project she undertakes, both as an actress and now as a producer. ‘The Idea Of You’ director, Michael Showalter, had nothing but praise for her, specifically as a producer of the film, saying she thought out every detail for her character, Solene; even the pens that she used. But Hathaway didn’t always get that praise. In fact, following her Oscar win for her performance in ‘Les Miserables’, she was was deemed undesirable. ‘A lot of people wouldn’t give me roles because they were so concerned about how toxic my identity had become online,’ she told Vanity Fair. There was so much hate intended towards her that there’s even an article somewhere on the Internet with the caption, ‘Why does everyone hate Anne Hathaway?’ It was a surprise to Hathaway herself, because the only thing that was different about her was that she was an Oscar winner. And yet, her reputation was ruined.

It wasn’t until Christopher Nolan took a chance by hiring Hathaway in the 2014 movie, ‘ Interstellar’. He previously worked with her in the 2012 movie, ‘The Dark Knight Rises’. ‘I had an angel in Christopher Nolan, who did not care about that and gave me one of the most beautiful roles I’ve had in one of the best films that I’ve been a part of. I don’t know if he knew that he was backing me at the time, but it had that effect. And my career did not lose momentum the way it could have if he hadn’t backed me. Humiliation is such a rough thing to go through. The key is to not let it close you down. You have to stay bold, and it can be hard because you’re like, ‘If I stay safe, if I hug the middle, if I don’t draw too much attention to myself, it won’t hurt.’ But if you want to do that, don’t be an actor. You’re a tightrope walker. You’re a daredevil. You’re asking people to invest their time and their money and their attention and their care into you. So you have to give them something worth all of those things,” she added. “And if it’s not costing you anything, what are you really offering?’

I loved Anne Hathaway’s entire interview with Vanity Fair. It was raw and emotional. As a fan, I got to see a side of Hathaway that I hadn’t seen in any other actor. During her time with the magazine, Hathaway got to watch her previous movies, ‘The Princess Diaries’ and ‘Devil Wears Prada’, as well as her new movie, ‘The Idea Of You’. Watching ‘The Princess Diaries’ and ‘Devil Wears Prada’ all over for the first time in over 20 years was nostalgic for Hathaway. You could certainly tell that both movies were work that she loved and was proud of. It was interesting to watch her watch ‘The Princess Diaries’, in particular. Here’s an Oscar winner who’s done so much great work and life since the movie came out in 2001 when she was merely a teenager, and she’s still so proud of that time in her life. She was on the verge of tears while watching it. It speaks volumes about her character. It goes to show that winning an Oscar didn’t change her as a person one bit. She was punished for being good at her job, and it took that ONE person to believe in her to get her back into action.

Also during that same interview with Vanity Fair, Hathaway opened up about a very personal time in her life. In 2015, she was the star of a one-woman show, ‘Grounded’, where she played a fighter pilot whose unexpectedly got pregnant, and therefore, sent home from the front lines. During that time, Hathaway also got pregnant and miscarried. Every day, she had to play a pregnant woman all while going through her infertility struggles and the trauma of a miscarriage. When she was pregnant with her second child, Hathaway opened up about her tough journey to motherhood. ‘When it did go well for me, having been on the other side of it — where you have to have the grace to be happy for someone — I wanted to let my sisters know, ‘You don’t have to always be graceful. I see you and I’ve been you.’ The thing that broke my heart, blew my mind, and gave me hope was that for three years after, almost daily, a woman came up to me in tears and I would just hold her, because she was carrying this [pain] around and suddenly it wasn’t all hers anymore.” She added, “I wasn’t going to feel ashamed of something that seemed to me statistically to actually be quite normal.’

Being a woman is hard. It’s a full time job to be proving yourself to society and proving everyone around you that you’re good enough. As a woman, no matter what you do, it’s not good enough. If you’re a stay-at-home mom, you’re asked why you’re not working. If you’re a working mom, you’re considered to be selfish and be told you don’t care about your kids and their well-being. If you’re working and decide for yourself you’re going to live a child-free life, you’re labeled as careless. If you fight for your beliefs, opinions, and leadership, you’re labeled as angry. If you’re quiet, you’re labeled as weak. As a woman, nothing is ever good enough.

And in Anne Hathaway’s case, she was labeled as someone who’s difficult to work with, or too good to work with. In hindsight, she was labelled as a diva strictly because she won an Oscar. She was punished for her hard work being recognized as success. But for what reason, exactly? Men certainly don’t get this type of treatment. Taylor Swift’s 2019 song, The Man’ certainly holds true in this situation. But it also took Anne Hathaway a man, Christopher Nolan, took her under his wing and hired her to work for him when no one else would. He took a chance on her, because he already knew she was good and knew exactly who she was as a professional. With that being said, I don’t believe he took a risk by hiring her. He simply wasn’t phased by her negative reputation in the press, and instead, hired her for reasons that were right for him at the time.

And speaking of Christopher Nolan, he reunited with Hathaway after working together on ‘Dark Knight Rises’ in 2014’s, ‘Interstellar’, which also co-starred Matthew McConaughey, who, just like Hathaway, won an Oscar. He didn’t get the same treatment as Hathaway, though. On the contrary, his win was celebrated. We still get chills from his speech 10 years later. Just like Hathaway, he’s a Hollywood veteran. The only difference between the two is that Hathaway is a woman, and McConaughey is a man, and the world is a sexist motherf*cker. And this is definitely not a Christopher Nolan or a Matthew McConaughey problem. This is the bullsh*t society we live in where women are undervalued and considered to be less than and unworthy.

I recently saw a segment from ‘The View’ where the hosts answer the question, ‘Do Women Need Men?’ For the most part, the answer to it was a big fat ‘no’ to it. My husband, when he overheard such truce, he said it was the most bullsh*t thing he ever heard. And personally, I have to agree with it. My answer to the question is much more complicated than simply saying, ‘No, women don’t need men’. Women need men, and in turn, men need women. It’s not one gender over another. Both are important. Both are crucial making our world a different, better kind of place to be in.

If you really think about it, a lot of the inventions that we have today that make our lives so much easier – things that we really don’t think much about because they’re just part of us and our livelihood at this point – were invented by women. These things include:

• A dishwasher
• Washing machine
• Paper bags
• Beer
• Toilet paper holder
• Car heater
• Call waiting & Caller ID
• Chemotherapy
• Car Carriers
• Windshields
• Chocolate chip cookies
• Coffee filters
• Computer software and algorithm
• Disposable diaper
• Electric water heater
• Electric refrigerator
• Feeding tube
• Fire escape
• Folding cabinrt bed
• Foot pedal trash can
• GIF animation
• Globes
• Hairbrush
• Home security system
• Q-tips
• Retractable dog leash
• Tissue holder
• VoIP
• Wireless transmission technology

And the list really doesn’t end there. This list alone just goes to show that women are creative and innovative creatures. We’re the ones that are undervalued and treated as the less than by society (mostly by men). But these things on the list created by women are used by men. This doesn’t necessarily prove that women don’t need men. But it does mean that women are not to be underestimated. We’re creatures not to be messed with. And what I mean when I say that women need men is that we need them to be loving, strong, emotional, nurturing, supportive, unattached, non-competitive with us, thick in his own skin. We need them to be feminists. We need them to be proud of our success. That’s at least my definition of needing a man.

When I initially saw the ‘Do Women Need Men?’ segment from ‘The View’, I immediately thought of ‘The Devil Wears Prada’. You can’t blame me for this. I watch the movie every single day because my son loves it. The more I watch it, the more I analyze it bit by bit. I analyze it so much that I think my brain will explode. But as I analyze it, I look more into Anne Hathaway’s character, Andy Sacks, Meryl Streep’s character, Miranda Presley, Andy’s boss, and their uncanny similarities. In particular, I keep thinking about their last dialogue together when they’re in Paris, which leads to Andy quitting her job.

Miranda is a female boss; a leader. The people that work for her are scared of her, but they also respect her. They want to please her. She has her ways of putting people down without saying much when she sees a lack of work that’s up to her par. She doesn’t hold back when showing her disappointment and disapproval of how a certain job gets done. She certainly doesn’t hold back letting her feelings known to Andy. At one point, Miranda even fat-shamed Andy during one of her speeches to Andy about what a disappointment she was to her and the company. Throughout her time at Runway Magazine, Miranda was setting Andy up for failure. She was giving her the absolute impossible tasks as an assistant. But no matter the triumph, and no matter how many times Andy was ready to quit her job, she always proved Miranda wrong. She proved she was worthy. And by the end, Andy became more like Miranda than she would’ve liked to admit. Just like Miranda, Andy did everything she felt she needed to do, and in her own words, had no choice but to do, to get ahead. She even stabbed Emily, Miranda’s first assistant, in the back to go to Paris with Miranda. And though Andy is sure that she screws things up when she abruptly quits her job in Paris, she’s proven wrong when she goes to a job interview and is told that she was given a rave review by Miranda herself. Of Andy, Miranda says that she’s by far her biggest disappointment, and if not hired by the next employer.

And though both Miranda and Andy were two women who aimed to get ahead in their careers, it didn’t mean they didn’t need they weren’t longing for the love and nurture of a man in their lives. At the start of the movie, Miranda was married and had two children from a previous marriage. By the end of the film, we learned that she would be getting divorced. We saw a tiny little glimpse into Miranda’s home life away from work. It seemed as though her husband, or as Miranda called him, another father figure to her girls, was petrified and agonized of Miranda’s success. It was implied that even though he knew she was a powerful woman, he still wanted to feel like a man in the relationship, but he felt less thanas she always took the lead; both in public and in private. This eventually led to their divorce. When she tells Andy of her divorce when Andy comes to her for work purposes and sees Miranda makeup-free and at her most vulnerable, we see a completely different side to Miranda. Even though she’s a woman of power, we still see her longing a partnership and the company of a man in her life. We see her longing for a one true love and a real father figure to her girls.

Andy was in a happy long-term relationship with Nate at the start of the film. Together, they live a very simple life. They’re happy living in a shitty apartment, working shitty jobs, and hanging out with their great friends who have the exact same morals as they do. Nate loved Andy for who she was rather than who she became over time when working for Miranda at Runway. In his words, she became ‘one of them’. And she did, because that’s what she had to do in order to get ahead in her career. The longer she works at Runway ,the more distant she becomes from Nate, as well as from the life that she used to know. As Andy decides to go to Paris with Miranda, she and Nate break up. As Nate put it, the person who called her was the relationship she was in. And the person who was always calling was Miranda. After she quits, Andy apologizes to Nate for the way she treated him as a result of her job. She says to him that working there was a mistake, and it’s implied that the two will be back together. Though the film has a happy ending, there’s one thing I high disagree on. It wasn’t a mistake for Andy to work for Miranda at Runway, and she shouldn’t have apologized to Nate; at least not for working there. She got what she wanted, and she achieved what she came there for. It came at a price, and sacrifices had to made, but I can’t say those sacrifices weren’t worth it. A man has to be strong enough to take a step back and let his woman shine.

I realize that Anne Hathaway’s character on ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ has a lot more in common with her characters on ‘Modern Love’ and ‘Love & Other Drugs’. All three were aiming high for a success in their careers. Particularly, Maggie from ‘Love & Other Drugs’ and Lexi from ‘Modern Love’ are both struggling with an illness. Maggie struggles with Parkinson’s Disease; Lexi with Bipolar. Both, though in different ways, find themselves realizing that no matter how independent and strong-willed they are, they still want the tender care of a man in their lives. And when it comes to Anne Hathaway herself, the fact that she suffered a miscarriage and still went out there and performed for so many people, and performed as a pregnant woman , just shows how strong and powerful of a woman she really is. But who’s to say she did it alone without the love and support of her husband, Adam Shulman?

So I guess the right way to answer the million dollar question, ‘Do women need men?’ is as follows: No, women don’t need men. We don’t need them to get ahead. In fact, men have their ways of holding us back. But we want them. No matter how much we hate to admit it, we want to have them in our lives. We want their love, support, nurture, and care. What we do need from men, though, and not necessarily in a romantic way, is for them to be just as much feminists as we are. If we have more men who believe in us and our capabilities as we do, and who advocate for our rights just as much as we do, women will be in a much better place – both personally and professionally. Anne Hathaway’s career is just one small example of that.