I am the estrogen queen. A sad but true fact: I cried at Spider-Man. Spider-Man is not one of those movies anyone would describe as a tearjerker, yet I still managed to get hysterical. I mean, Spidey's uncle died! It was sad! Really! I am also a complete tool of the media. I react exactly as movies want me to react. As disappointing as Insomnia was when compared with director Christopher Nolan's previous outing, Memento, I still gasped at the loud noises and hid my head when Al Pacino started looking too much like a parched iguana.

Which is why I was so excited to hear that Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood was hitting theaters. I love crap-ass emotive female movies. Chick flicks, as they're called. Southern female movies are the brashest of the chick flicks. They don't screw around. Southern woman movies whole-heartedly embrace the hysterical woman. These movies are based on the idea that women sit around and gossip and cry all day. It's what we all do, right? Well, occasionally we dance the two-step, but mostly we just cry. Divine Secrets is the sassy progeny other movies that extol the virtues of Southern womanhood. The godmother of all Southern woman movies, clearly, is Gone with the Wind, though I'm more intrigued by contemporary mint julep fare: specifically Steel Magnolias and Terms of Endearment.

Magnolias and Terms are on cable television daily. TBS could be described as the all Steel Magnolias channel. I've seen each movie at least 10 times and I cry every single time at the same parts. They reduce me to a blubbering fool. And if my Mom watches with me? Forget it. The men run screaming from the living room. Our house becomes vagina central.

The two movies have essentially the same plot, though Magnolias covers it in a thicker drawl and more saccharine. Mother and Daughter have close, though ornery relationship. Mother/Friends are pithy to the point of craziness. Mental disorder, why, that's plum funny in Southern girl movies! Daughter develops life-threatening disease. Mother loses it. Daughter dies. Mother realizes how much her child meant to her, and is kept afloat by a group of close friends.

There's not even death in Ya-Ya. Only flesh wounds. The film focuses on the relationship between Vivi and Siddalee Walker, a spitfire mother and daughter played by Ellen Burstyn (Ashley Judd in her younger incarnation) and Sandra Bullock. Neither actress is a stranger to the chick flick. Bullock has already waded in the shallow end of the Southern Woman genre with the sappy Hope Floats, while Burstyn starred in How to Make an American Quilt, which is even worse because it has loftier goals. Come on, Maya Angelou is in Quilt. She's actually a respectable human being.

Ya-Ya begins with Sidda having written a hit Broadway show. She is interviewed by Time magazine and spills the family beans about her checkered childhood -- Vivi's alcoholism, her mental illness, etc. Vivi is incensed. She cuts Sidda out of all the family photographs and writes her out of the will. Extreme behavior is acceptable because Vivi is a Southern belle. She's allowed to be a completely irrational, jaundiced portrait of a real woman. Temper-tantrums for a seventy-year-old? Hell yes. Yet, Vivi is still portrayed as fabulous.

Old lady alcoholism is fodder for much of the movie's humor. When Vivi reads the Time article and freaks out, she calls the Ya-Yas in for reinforcements. The Ya-Yas are her cultish group of best friends. "I hope it's not a real emergency," says a Ya-Ya, "I only brought one bottle of vodka."

In Steel Magnolias, Ouiser (irascible Shirley MacLaine) exclaims, "I'm an old Southern woman. We're supposed to wear silly hats and grow tomatoes." There is an abundance of silly hats in Ya-Ya. The sister-friends act like wee girls and wear silly hats and bicker continuously. It's what they've been doing for nearly a century. Why should they be mature? It's no fun.

And men in these movies? Merely sounding boards for the high-pitched yowls of the Southern woman. They have names like "Shep" and "Drum" and sink weakly into the background while their wives steal the show. James Garner -- Shep in Ya-Ya -- does a good job of sinking into background. His character even says to Vivi, "I learned to get out of your way." There is only one other kind of man in the Southern woman movie -- the asshole. This man is conquered by the girl power generated from the covalent bonds of Southern female friendship. Men -- who needs them when you have girlfriends?

As critical as I am of Southern women movies, there must be some reason why I keep coming back to them. Perhaps somewhere in my Yankee soul I'm jealous of the Southern women in these movies. They never have to control their feelings, and they get to wear lots of girly clothes and prance around all womanly. They get to live on huge plantations and fan themselves while they are driven around in vintage cars. They don't have to worry about competing with men because the men keep out of their way. My affection towards these movies grates against every feminist bone in my body, but I love them anyway.

Someday maybe I'll go down South and melt the Northern Popsicle that's resided up my ass since I hit puberty. For now though, I'm keeping north of the Mason-Dixon and watching Southern chick flicks till the cows come home.

Jessica Grose can be reached at Jessica_Grose@brown.edu.

Issue Date: June 27 - July 4, 2002