Penis Envy

Liana Melendez
Eng101.103
December 3, 2009
Dr. Smith

Hollywood films generally portray women to suffer from “Penis Envy!” Beginning from decades and decades ago, men have always been known to be the ones who are in charge and in control. Back in the days women could not do many of the things men could do. For example, women could not work, they could not vote, and in some countries women still can’t leave the house if not with their spouses. These rules apparently were enforced by men.
Since women could not work, men were known as “The Bread Winners.” They would work in order to maintain their families and the only thing women could do was be a housewife. However, as decades and decades passed, these circumstances slowly began to change. Things changed so drastically that now women work, vote; leave their homes as they please and even more beyond that. Although women can do anything a man can do today, the world still has a way of believing that men, somehow, are still in control and can still make the rules at home.
Even your average household chore of cooking has remained a task predominantly done by women! This is all due to the fact that men still believe that because they have a penis, their only goal in life is to be “The Bread Winner” in their household and women simply should handle the rest, not because they say so but because it just simply is. However, now that women have more freedom to accomplish tasks similar to men’s, women still are limited in how much they can do, due to the control that men have. Therefore, women go through life-long phase of “penis envy” in which they admire the power that men acquire and are envious in resent towards it. Hollywood definitely portrays this in movies, demonstrating women suffering from “Penis Envy!”
One Hollywood movie that portrays a women suffering from “penis envy” is The Matrix. The main character (of course being a man) was Neo. His love interest in the film was Trinity. Trinity was also an important character but it was only because Neo’s life depended on Trinity at one point. Trinity “gets down” just like the men in the movie. She is a computer programmer and hacker which were known to be men’s tasks back in the days. In the movie, she is one of the very few females so in some way it seems as if she is competing with the roles of the men in the movie. Trinity takes part in chases with police officers and agents, she gains the ability to go back and forth into the Matrix world, she joins the Nebuchadnezzar men in their task to unplug Neo from the Matrix and she blows things up as well. She takes the liberty to somewhat guide Neo throughout the movie although he is male and men are usually known to lead because men are always in charge. This Hollywood movie shows that Trinity can be in love with Neo but she doesn’t love him because he can support her but because he let her be in control.
Women have been shown to be envious of male roles in Hollywood. Today females like to be in control in their relationships and in their households setting their household standards and rules. Little by little we view in Hollywood films that women are generally gaining more power and this is simply due to a line in history of “Penis Envy!”