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My partner was a little bit unintentionally dismissive when I told him how much my girlfriends and I have enjoyed watching The Crown. It was something like “Oh, you enjoy the pretty settings and costumes?” And I hadn’t considered why I enjoy watching it, but my gut apparently knew, and I snapped at him “Do you have any idea how fantastic it is to watch a twenty-year-old girl face down a room of her nation’s most powerful men and they have to listen to her?”
No, I don’t think a man can understand how fantastic it feels to witness this. Nor watching a young woman who cannot succumb to Imposter Syndrome and must make herself equal to the task. I even found myself watching the movie The Young Victoria for a similar feeling of peeking into the back room of politics, only it wasn’t as satisfying as that movie focused on the love story–something we’ve seen a million times before. *yawn*
I enjoy these shows and movies the same way I enjoyed watching The West Wing. Only here, the diminutive woman must by design be flawlessly feminine in the most traditional sense. She cannot win the game by being more masculine, as many women must normally do in politics, she must comport herself as The lady, yet she holds so much power. I could even relate to that moment when she puts on the crown and asks if she can borrow it for walking practice, forgetting that it actually belongs to her.
It’s really difficult to explain it to you blokes, but I bet all the women reading this understand. She gets to wear demure sweater sets and still be ultimately in charge of pretty much everything. Her husband whines about it but in the end she cannot capitulate to his insistence that they take more traditional roles even within their relationship. He, too, must make remake himself to suit her station. And then the way her job has to naturally impact her parenting and the split of the work / life balance. So many weird ways we can relate to this entirely unique “job” situation!
This is heady stuff and I don’t condone monarchy at all. Her son, Charles, visited our offices a few years back and I couldn’t be bothered to go into the next room to meet him because I do not consider myself one of his subjects. But yet I love this show. The costumes and sets are also lush eye candy, don’t get me wrong, but that’s not what makes the story gripping.