I was reluctant to watch the Jennifer Lawrence comedy No Hard Feelings because the synopsis alone made me think it wasn’t gonna be my cup of French Roast, and I was 1000% correct. But I also found myself getting angry about a film and TV trope that we could really do without.
If you’re lucky enough to have never seen No Hard Feelings, it’s the story of Maddie (Lawrence), a 32-year-old woman who hasn’t paid the property taxes on the Montauk, NY home she inherited from her deceased mother and has her car taken away. This sucks, since she primarily works as a bartender at a beachside bar and as an Uber driver! So what does she do? Look for another job doing anything else in town? Take the Long Island Railroad to find a bartending gig in Manhattan that isn’t dependent on seasonal tourists?
No. She answers a Craigslist ad placed by the parents of a 19-year-old son who’s apparently too awkward and chaste for their liking, so they want to hire a young woman to “date” their son before he goes to college—and by “date,” they very definitely mean “have sex with.” In exchange for the “dating,” they will give the woman they hire a car. They make it clear they’re pro-sex worker. Great? But they’re doing this behind their son’s back. Ew.
If this plot sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is. It’s a comedy, so we should make allowances, right? Sure. Except that the film tries to make larger points about helicopter parenting being terrible (kids today are too sheltered!) or rich tourists making life terrible for the locals (it’s gentrification’s fault that I have to answer an ad to sleep with a 19-year-old!), leading me to believe that, on some level, it’s trying to be a smart movie. But it doesn’t make either of these points well.
The biggest failure of this film is the disservice done to the character of Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman), the 19-year-old at the center of all this parental scheming. Every older adult in his life is trying to prescribe the most specific and toxic ways for him to come into maturity, “step out of his comfort zone,” and take risks.
And here’s the trope I’m sick of: that men and boys need to want sex at all times from anyone who offers it, and if they don’t, there’s something wrong.
They absolutely, 100% had sex
When deciding whether or not to see this film, I asked people I respect and who’d seen it whether I should, specifying my misgivings. Enjoyment of the film varied from person to person, but they all agreed that the “problematic elements” were “handled pretty well,” and the two leads “don’t really have sex,” so it’s “fine.”
We obviously saw different films. In the film I saw, Maddie and Percy absolutely have sex. Whether or not sex is enjoyable isn’t the deciding factor in whether or not sex happened. Otherwise, plenty of sex would be disqualified. Nor is sex determined by whether or not a penis is inserted into someone’s body. Otherwise, lots of queer sex “wouldn’t count.”
Once his parents’ plot has been revealed, Percy gets rightfully angry, sarcastically requesting sex from Maddie so she can “get her car.” She agrees, and they get under the covers on his bed. We don’t see anything, but we’re told that his penis doesn’t find its way to her vagina, ending up on her thigh instead. He orgasms, she very definitely doesn’t. Hilarious!
At the end of the film, Percy makes a comment about not going to college a virgin, and Maddie says that what they did “doesn’t really count” as sex. Percy says, “I’m pretty sure it does,” but she remains skeptical and makes a face.
It absolutely counts, and I’m sorry, but Maddie shouldn’t get to drive off to California to live her best life thinking that she didn’t “actually have sex” with a vulnerable 19-year-old. Because she dang well did, and if she’s guilty about that? Good.
If the roles were reversed …
It’d be clear as day how problematic this story is if Maddie were a male character and Percy were a 19-year-old woman.
For someone who’s pretending to meet her mark naturally, she sure comes on strong, bombarding Percy with double-entendres and strategic bending-over the moment she steps into the animal shelter where he volunteers. He gives zero impression that he’s someone who’d respond to such overtures, but Maddie doesn’t let up, trying desperately to “seal the deal” right there in the animal shelter’s back office.
The only reason her shenanigans are “believable” and played for comedy is because Maddie, those behind this film, and many in the viewing audience are working under the assumption that any red-blooded, straight 19-year-old man would love to have a hot, older woman come and throw sex at them. The idea that a straight young man wouldn’t respond favorably to “flirting” from someone who looks like Jennifer Lawrence is considered ridiculous. We’re supposed to laugh, because look how awkward he is!
Maddie’s behavior escalates as …
- She picks him up in an unmarked, windowless van and prevents him from cycling home by throwing his bike into the back of the van, insisting she be allowed to “give him a ride.”
- Her dialogue’s relentlessly sexually charged, with no attention paid to his response.
- She’s so aggressive he needs to mace her, and not only is this played for laughs, but we’re meant to sympathize with her when she questions why he even has mace. Since he’s a young man, carrying mace is seen as “overly cautious.”
- She takes him to a bar and coerces him into drinking by ordering for him.
- She tries actively blocking him from having friends, or a girlfriend, his own age to protect her shot at the car.
In another “comedic moment,” Doug Khan (Hasan Minhaj), a guy Maddie went to high school with, visits. A real estate agent, he’s here to try to sell her house, and it comes up that while he was a student, he had an affair with his high school Spanish teacher. When Maddie asks, “Didn’t she go to jail?” Doug replies, “Mrs. Khan went to jail. We got married, but nobody tells that story.” Hilarious.
Over and over, boys and young men being offered sex by inappropriately older women is played for laughs. Over the course of the film, Maddie starts to genuinely like Percy and feel guilty about what she’s doing, and we’re meant to sympathize with her again.
Here’s the thing: It wouldn’t be okay even if she didn’t come to genuinely like him as a person. Maddie doing any of this at all was not okay. It’s not an ethical minefield because she’s now decided she thinks he’s “a good kid!” It’s an ethical minefield because despite Percy being technically “of age,” all of her actions were manipulative, abusive, and non-consensual.
No Hard Feelings tries to make the squicky less squicky by making sure we know Percy is 19 (a weird age to be starting college), so it’s technically not illegal. Yet, I kept waiting for the film to call Maddie out, or for her to recognize how gross her actions were. That never happened. The situation was presented as a woman “helping” a young man come out of his shell. His “shell” is no one’s business but his!
In films from Almost Famous (“deflower the virgin!”) to May/December (loosely based on the true story of a teacher who sexually abused her 12-year-old student, later marrying him), boys “getting to” have sex with older women is seen at worst as “good for him!” and at best as “complicated.” And when the stories we watch perpetuate the same ideas over and over again, we start accepting them in our real lives.
How can we expect straight boys and young men to care about consent and waiting for partners who want to sleep with them if we’re constantly bombarding them with the idea that they should want to have sex with as many people as possible, as often as possible, as early as possible? Indeed, that they’re expected to have all that sex as presented as the most important indicator of their masculinity, and if they don’t, it’s an indicator of of problems?
We put emphasis on “protecting” girls and young women from sex (ignoring that most young women can and do want sex, and deserve to explore their sexuality freely with peers in a way that’s right for them) without caring about the other side of the equation. We push sex on young men and wonder why young women might be in danger. We perpetuate and accept certain narratives in media and wonder why society is “like this.”
You can’t weigh down one side of the scale and expect it to be balanced.
(featured image: Columbia Pictures)
