"He's Just Not that Into You"

Tonight I went with four of my roommates to see the new film, "He's Just Not that Into You." When I was a sophomore in high school, I wanted to find out more about "how men think" and bought the book which pretty much states-- if he's not calling you back, if he's not asking you out, and if he's cheating on you-- maybe he's just not into you. I loved how the movie starts because it shows a little girl on a playground that is bullied by a boy and her mom explains, "that's because he likes you." This seems so strange, but I can guarantee that almost every girl has been told this nonsense at least once during her childhood. The problem is that this attitude transcends into future relationships and provides an explanation for why men act like jerks and yet we are still convinced that they like us. I loved the movie and found it really entertaining, mostly because it was more realistic than most movies. It showed men and women vulnerable and eager to find love. There was a girl that acted pathetic in the presence of men and stood by her phone waiting for a call, but there were also men in the movie that waited for women to call them, frantically checking their phones every fifteen minutes. When I first heard about the movie, I assumed by the title that it was only centered on girls that wonder why a guy does not like them. I immediately thought, why is the choice up to men to decide who likes who- can't a girl "just not be into" a guy? But the movie was actually about both male and females and the struggle to find love, or friendship, or fall out of love, or to just find yourself. It was refreshing to see a movie that, in my mind, treated men and women equally.