Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers Movie Analysis

In Kathleen Karlyn’s third chapter of Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers, she states how Girl World is ambivalent. Not only is Girl World unruly because the films place female desire as a focal point in the film, thereby validating the existence of female desire, while also being manufactured by the ideologies of patriarchal and postfeminist cultures with female power stopping at basic normative femininity. The film The Devil Wears Prada (2006) finds itself in agreement with both of these ideas. On one hand, women like Miranda Priestly and Andy Sachs are at the helm of their own desires and power, while on the other hand are also punished in the universe of the film for stepping out of normative femininity and trying to have it all. During

By the end of the film, Andy removes herself from the fashion world completely in order to maintain a balance between her personal and work life, while Miranda continues forward in control over her job but struggling in her personal life. As Andy is the protagonist, the film’s ending seems to correlate with the idea that straying too far from normative femininity can be damaging, with Miranda being an example of what could happen. Even though the fashion world could be seen as a form of normative femininity, in the context of the film it is not, as Ferriss states that the films use fashion as an indicator of transformations within the characters. While Andy herself goes back to her normal clothes towards the end of the film, she doesn’t completely give up her desires and confidence that the clothes at Runway gave her. She is a different person at the end, using her makeover as experience. This leaves Andy as being a character that balances between the two angles of Girl World, with one half powered by her desires to succeed, and the other half coming to terms with the punishments that lie ahead if she tries to have it all like