Directed by Matthew Meshakoff
Written by Noah Stern
Starring Arye Gross, Kevin Pollak, Courtney Cox, Julie Brown
Release Date March 26th, 1993
Published June 9th, 2023
There is a scene in the 1993 'romantic comedy' The Opposite Sex and How to Live With Them that demonstrates the ugly toxicity of the early 1990s. Courtney Cox has gone to the beach with her new boyfriend, played by a sentient loaf of wonder bread named Arye Gross. As he lounges on the beach, Gross's friends grab Cox and drag her away to play some beach game. When she returns, she's nude, save for a towel. His friends have stripped her naked during this 'game' and she was able to limp back to her boyfriend who could not be less interested in her plight.
Cox's character appears shaken by this. She makes clear that she did not consent to being stripped nude by her boyfriend's friends. And yet, the tone of the scene is clearly comic. We are expected to laugh about this implied sexual assault. We know this because Gross appears to find this situation very funny as he jokingly blames her for letting his friends drag her into their game. Apparently, she should have known better. That scene is par for the course on how ugly, toxic, and misogynistic this movie is, especially through the lens of 30 years later.
For those thinking I am going to defend this in any way by saying 'it was a different time,' I will not be doing that. What happened in this scene was wrong when it took place as it remains wrong today. This casual attitude toward assault is reflective of a culture at the time that excused far too much awful male behavior with the phrase 'boys will be boys.' That attitude is almost always followed by an admonishment of the victim, blaming the woman for putting herself into this situation. You can think, it's just a movie or it's just this movie, but this movie is a product of the attitudes of the time. It's a reflection of the casual ugliness around it.
The entirety of The Opposite Sex and How to Live With Them is terrifically awful. Moment one to moment last, this very stupid, mind-numbing 'romantic comedy' is never funny. It's a cringe inducing relic and somehow, it's a mere 30 years ago that this gross movie was released. If you wonder why we are reckoning with toxic masculinity and a culture of sexual harassment to this day, this movie is indicative of where we were just three decades ago. It was a time when were so comfortable with men assaulting an unwilling female victim that we made a joke of the assault in a romantic comedy. Let that sink in for a moment.
