Surely everyone remembers "The Stepford Wives"! Let's have a little refresher, shall we?
What's a 'Stepford Wife'? The Anti-Feminist Stereotype Created By A Movie.
"Even if you've never seen
The Stepford Wives, the dark 1975 film sci-fi/horror film where wealthy suburban men turn their partners into subservient robots, you know what a "Stepford Wife" is. A Stepford Wife isn't just perfect, she's
too perfect. There's an eerie, robotic quality to the way that she goes about her day and dotes on her husband. Subservient and docile, the Stepford Wife is a thing that should not be.
There are at least three iterations of
The Stepford Wives and multiple, lesser, spin-offs, and while each version of the story packs its own specific punch it's the phrase that seems to stick with the population, not the story, not the harrowing images on the big screen. Decades after the film's initial release and slow journey to cult status, the term "Stepford Wife" has nestled into the vernacular at large to describe anything that's too perfect, or too good to be true.
"To put it simply, a Stepford Wife is a submissive woman who puts her husband's wants and needs ahead of hers while maintaining an immaculate personal appearance. Eternally youthful and docile, the term is full of venom. No one should be excited that they're fulfilling the Stepford ideal of perfection and servitude unless it's something to which all parties have consented.
Based on the 1972 novel by Ira Levin (Rosemary's Baby) and director Bryan Forbes' 1975 film, Stepford Wives were robotic versions of a woman, refitted to be a better version of someone's partner. Forbes came up with the signature Stepford style: Think Marilyn Monroe meets June Cleaver. Their bodies are sculpted and their minds are molded to be exactly what their husbands want. The Stepford Wife doesn't want anything more than to serve because that's how she's programmed.
The Stepford Wives follows Joanna Eberhart, a New York City photographer whose husband, Walter, persuades her to move to Connecticut. There, they and their two children settle in the idyllic town of Stepford, which has an unnatural number of bland, smiling women in long skirts. Joanna and best friend Bobbie Markowe grow suspicious as they watch new friends like Charmaine Wimpiris change personalities overnight, transforming into obedient male fantasies. The terrifying truth is, the members of the local men's association have been killing their wives and supplanting them with high-tech, subservient robots.
Forbes crafted a thriller in bright suburban sunlight, where modern-minded 1975 women are replaced by soulless androids who will just
die if they don't get this recipe. More than four decades later, the film stands as a creepy gender study that cleverly explores a woman's role in the home and turned "Stepford wife" into a household phrase. "It has passed into the language", says Nanette Newman, who starred as the eerily cheery Carol Van Sant. "A Stepford wife epitomizes somebody who is perfectly made up, looks perfect, and presents a very perfect facade.
Feminism challenged the the traditional view of gender roles -- that men were the smart ones, the ones who belonged in charge, doing things of great consequence, and women were subservient by nature, fit to do easy and less consequential tasks that were denigrated as "women's work." Furthermore, a higher emphasis was placed on women's appearance; they were expected to look put together at all times, and to "keep" their figure -- important to "keeping" a man.
There was the condescending idea that women should aspire to "have it all" -- a perfect home, perfect kids, perfect marriage and perfect appearance -- and that this would bring satisfaction. But
having it all sounds a lot like
doing it all, doesn't it? Keeping everyone else happy and everything tidy requires a near abdication of self.
The sinister husbands in the film don't really want wives -- they want unquestioning multi-taskers who look and behave perfectly and appear to be happy about it. They want robots, so they make robots.
The fact is, managing a household is complex, potentially soul-draining, and may have required more skill than the jobs the bread-winning men were doing. Striving for the Barbie-doll ideal, forever dieting while their beer-swilling husbands packed on the pounds and lost their hair, required a discipline those husbands couldn't (or chose not to) understand.
Another way of viewing the Stepford Wife is as a critique of the unfairness of traditional gender expectations. In order to be the perfect wife, you'd almost
have to be a robot. And those seemingly perfect wives we all meet from time to time? Maybe they really
are robots.
The Stepford Wives was neither a critical or commercial success. Earning only $4 million at the box office in 1975, the film was derided by genre film averse critics and second wave feminists who felt that the film was
attempting to co-opt their movement with a shiny, beautiful facade. Many second-wave feminists derided it as exploitative trash. A 1975
New York Times article described how Columbia Pictures invited feminist activists to a Stepford screening, only for them to meet the film with "hisses, groans, and guffaws." Betty Friedan called it a "rip-off of the women's movement" and then "stomped out of the screening room."
"She was very upset about our movie," Tina Louise says. "Very upset. She thought Ira Levin was saying that's the way things should be, but he didn't feel that way at all." Neither did Forbes or the rest of the cast. "Bryan always used to say, 'If anything, it's anti-men!'" Newman recalls. "If the men are really stupid enough to want wives like that, then it's sad for them. I thought the men were ridiculous to want to make women into servile creatures."
What people missed at the time is that the film is a warning. The bad guys win. Katherine Ross is choked to death with a pair of nylons by her robotic doppelgänger. It's every bit as harrowing as the final moments of
Night of the Living Dead and
Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In the years following the film's release it became a cult classic. Each film offers its own perverse pleasures at a price."
would ha
Robot wives to order? Please pass me the bucket, I need to hurl.
Bella
Just think of the possibilities! You'll be able to build your own special “person” to order, as long as you have enough money to afford to do so. Of course, the robots will eventually be able to repair each other. Hopefully, humans will still have a place in this world. I guess, eventually, we're the ones who'll end up being the drones. 
