Why Can't A Woman Be a Man?

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Not yet. And not likely, when you look more closely at the women's roles. Like Ms. Warshawski, they fall into three stereotypes: butch, babe and baby sitter.

BUTCH. In The Terminator, Hamilton's Sarah Connor evolved from a klutzy waitress to a warrior woman who crushed the killer robot in a hydraulic press and spat out the immortal line: "You're terminated, f---er." In T2 Sarah is a guerrilla gone south, dynamiting computer facilities, threatening to inject drain cleaner into the veins of her captors, stashing weapons with her own righteous version of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. She is a more twisted sister of Sigourney Weaver's Ripley in Aliens (also written and directed by T2's James Cameron), who proves her maternal mettle by blasting a space monster to ugly bits.

These are not strong women who use their ingenuity, humanity and mother wit. They are Rambo in drag. They have a higher testosterone count than the national debt ceiling; they solve problems with artillery and adrenaline. And too many filmmakers, strapped by the conventions of the shoot-'em-up genre, think they are solving the problem of beefing up women's roles by turning them into beefcake. It's steroid screenwriting. Cameron wonders, Why can't a (modern) woman be more like a (mean) man? Then he makes her into one.

If you want to get really glum about women's roles in current movies, look at the old ones. Of course, golden-age Hollywood didn't waste time on the war of the worlds; it was defining the battle of the sexes, and here the woman often won. Because she was better. Joan Crawford, as mom and career woman in Mildred Pierce (1945), could handle herself and a gun with steely assurance. And as a playwright in Sudden Fear (1952), she was smart enough to write her way out of her psychopathic husband's clutches. Could Julia Roberts have pulled that off in Sleeping with the Enemy?

There was no man more determined than Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis or Katharine Hepburn. These actresses were both strong and womanly. They didn't surrender their grace, compassion, resilience -- if we may say so, their femininity -- when they demanded social equality with men. They were looking to live with the other sex, not wipe it out.

BABE. You thought the breed was extinct, that the only female body fashion was the sculpted, sanded sylph. Then along came Jennifer Connelly, innocent of face, voluptuous of form, aerodynamically perfect. In The Hot Spot, Career Opportunities and this summer's The Rocketeer, Connelly has been used as an iconic throwback, a memento of a simpler (sexist) era. Film critics quickly add that she is an appealing actress, just as men once declared that they read Playboy for the interviews. But so far Connelly has been mainly calendar art: Bettie Page via Vargas, a body without a soul. Moviemakers can't find much for her to do. They can only let her be.

In the movie past, babes had brains; the flesh was almost incidental. Jean Harlow made censors' hair curl because she disdained foundation garments, but she exuded most of her sexuality between the ears. In Red-Headed Woman she cooed and screwed her way to the top, and got away with it. In Red Dust she was Clark Gable's lover, pal and lover again, taking it all in her sashaying stride. These movies were made in 1932, yet they are more mature than many current films -- more aware of love's compromises and lust's attractions.