Where Have All the Cary Grants Gone?

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You don't have to talk to smart single women for long before the subject moves on to the difficulty of finding even a standard-issue male. The more powerful the woman, the more elusive the match. Nor are married women above a little Y-chromosome deflation. "What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage" was one of the most e-mailed stories from the New York Times archive in recent weeks. It's a woman's account of using taming techniques on her spouse that she picked up from animal trainers. Apparently, if it works on a cricket, it works on a husband.

But who, settling into the center of the fifth row on a Friday night, Junior Mints and large diet soda in hand, wants to be reminded of real men? Why do we have to keep seeing in movies the people we sneaked out of the house to get away from?

It's clear we can't return to the days of Gigi and Daddy Long Legs and Funny Girl, when gawky young women were transformed into Givenchy-wearing lovelies by suave, much older men who danced well. Steve Martin tried that last year with shopgirl. In the scene where he puts his hand on Claire Danes' naked back, audience members around me practically reached for their cell phones to dial child services. Meanwhile, the vicissitudes of show biz have done in the witty Spencer Tracy--Katharine Hepburn bickerfests, because they require people to actually pay attention. And let's face it, we have all drunk at the Tom Hanks--Meg Ryan soda-pop stand once too often. So, yes, our romantic-comedy appetites are limited.

But would it be too much to ask to have women occasionally be the losers? Why is it that when stranded men are rescued by women it's comedy but when women are rescued by men it's an action film? Females have exactly the same rights to louse up and slack off and be really immature and dysfunctional as men do. If you put a banana peel in front of us, do we not slip? Enough is enough. The time has come to rise up, my sisters! Let's fight for our right to be in the wrong.