This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves.

Welcome to the waves. Slates podcast about gender, feminism, and the evolution of the

meet cute, manic pixie dream girls, and airport chases. Every episode you get a new pair of women

to talk about the thing we can't get off our minds. And today you've got me, Lily Loofboro,

a staff writer here at Slate, where I write about news, culture, comedy, and politics.

And you've got me, Nicole Perkins, writer, culture critic, and host of This is Good for You,

a podcast about the pleasures of life. I also used to co-host Thursday Kid, formerly at Slate,

where Bim Edo and me and I talked about all the ways pop culture shaped desire.

And today we're talking about the state of the rom-com past and future. I'll just come right out and

say that rom-coms were hugely important to me growing up in the 80s and 90s. They were the only

movies. And I'm only exaggerating a little queer women got to be protagonists. And the fantasy

at the core was pretty simple, right? Like it was that someone will love you not despite your

clumsiness or your typiness or whatever your flaws as a rom-com heroine, but because of it.

And so the message was allegedly, it's okay to be you. But it's kind of a sneaky genre, right?

Because let's face it, while a lot of rom-coms are at least on the surface about men realizing

their mistakes and chasing the female protagonist through airports to explain their epiphanies and

win them over. That's not always the deep work they're doing. Yes, it's what happened to Mr. D'Arcy,

or to Harry, and when Harry met Sally, or to Mark D'Arcy, and Bridget Jens' diary. But so many of

these movies were ultimately about gently but firmly disciplining the woman too. And maybe a

little bit more insidiously. In sweet Hamila Bama, Reese Witherspin's character gets disciplined

for during to abandon her small town self and succeed in the big city with its shiny men and

its better fashion. You've got mail, punishes Meg Ryan's character by costing her the work and the

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