69 Years of Slut Shaming: Spontaneously Deconstructing It’s a Wonderful Life

Show of hands: Who went to see It’s a Wonderful Life over the holidays?

Young Violet and Mary in It’s a Wonderful Life

Me! My brother and I took our kids to see the classic 1946 film about self-sacrifice, virtue and miracles. We have fond memories of seeing it as kids ourselves. I hadn’t seen it in a while and it still makes me cry, but I noticed a few new things, particularly about the women characters. And I hadn’t been expecting a quick session of explaining sexism to my kids, but that’s what I got.

Violet Bick

The first time you meet Mary Hatch and Violet Bick they are eight or nine years old, cooing over 12-year-old George Bailey. Violet says “I like him,” to which Mary responds in dismissive tones, “You like ALL the boys,” and Violet tosses her head, saying, “What’s wrong with that?” Mary then whispers into George’s deaf ear something to the effect of, “I’ll love you ‘til the day I die.” Mary goes on to carry a torch for George through high school and college and eventually marries him. Violet, meanwhile, goes from being a bit fast but glamorous and popular to being implied to be damaged goods. In the alternate George-free universe, Violet becomes a bedraggled taxi dancer while Mary becomes a librarian who never marries.

Driving home after the movie, my eight-year-old daughter and six-year-old son had all kinds of questions: “Was Mr. Potter the bad guy?” “What was he going to do with all the money he got?” “Why didn’t anyone else have any money”? They picked up pretty quickly on the central economic themes of the movie, but they also wanted to know about the motivations and back story of all the characters. “Why did Mary’s mother want her to marry Sam Wainwright?” (They figured the constant hee-hawing made him a jackass). This is roughly how the conversation went:

“I guess Mary’s mother wanted her daughter to have a good life, and to know that she was comfortable, and she thought Sam would be able to do that because he had lots of money.”
“Why did she need to marry Sam to have money?”
“Women in those days didn’t get to have very many jobs, and the jobs they had didn’t make as much money as other jobs. A lot of times they had to marry someone to be sure they could have enough money to eat.”
“That’s dumb!”
“Well yes, it is, but people in those days had a lot of silly ideas about women and other things, so girls couldn’t just decide to grow up and be doctors or engineers.”
“Or lawyers?”
“Or lawyers. I probably could not have been a lawyer if I was born then.”
“That’s sad.” [Here I’m thinking, so far, so good — parenting win]
“That’s very sad. It meant that women who didn’t want to get married didn’t get to do a lot of things. Like you remember Violet?” [Now, I’m opening the can of worms]
“Yeah.”
“Well, she didn’t want to get married, and people thought bad things about her. You know at the beginning, she said she liked all the boys and Mary talked to her like that’s a bad thing?”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No, that’s not a bad thing. It’s fine for her to like one boy or lots of boys, as long as everyone is happy and nice to each other.”
“Why was she going into the police car?”
“I’m not really sure. But I guess because she didn’t have a lot of good choices, she made some bad ones.”
“Like what?” [Now I’m thinking hard on my feet]
“I guess because she didn’t have a lot of jobs she could do, she had to get money from her friends who were boys. Maybe because she liked being friends with lots of boys, she ended up with some who weren’t very nice to her.”
“Why?”
“Unfortunately, men aren’t always nice to women who like lots of boys.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, it’s not. That’s one reason why I’m glad I wasn’t born back then.”

Mary and George with their daughter

Then the kids moved on to the supernatural paradox of George never having been born and why the Martini family had a goat. But I was left a little stunned. Sure, I’d brought Violet up on purpose because I didn’t particularly want them to leave the movie with all of its messages completely unchallenged (we didn’t get into the racial and ethnic stereotypes, or the problem of little girls defining themselves by their marital hopes by the age of nine), but I hadn’t really thought about the answers. As I came up with explanations on the fly for “loose women” that were suitable for my kids, I realized how painful it was to have to explain it to them at all.

I’m profoundly grateful that my daughters (and my six nieces) can likely live George Bailey’s wonderful life and not be limited to the choice between being Violet or Mary. But I was struck with how much of it is still true. “You like ALL the boys” still isn’t okay. And girls who want to be “friends” with most of the boys still have an uphill battle.

Header image credit: It’s a Wonderful Life film still (Republic Pictures)