Savannah Lee

I saw "The Incredibles" last night on TV. This is the animated Disney movie of a few years ago about the family with conveniently metaphorical super-powers. Their powers drive both the plot and their character development, which interact and start reinforcing each other in the incredibly tight Disney way. There's ElastiGirl, the mom who can "stretch." There's the super-strong dad who really isn't--not in his heart, where it counts. There's the little boy who's (literally) too fast to keep up with...

...and there's the angry teenage girl.

She can turn invisible and create force fields which repel everything. See what I mean about tidy metaphors? I'm not snarking here. I really admire this. It's like some high-powered guitarist once said about the music of Aerosmith: You have to be brilliant to be this simple. That may seem like a backhanded compliment, but it's not--it's Zen.

But what's really significant about this girl, because she's a girl, is her hair. For 90% of the movie, she lets it fall in her face, a symbol of her internalized anger at the world. Then all of a sudden, riding home in the limo after (what we think is) their final triumph, the father notices something. "Violet! You put your hair back!"

Yes, Violet is now wearing a hairband. Her face is fully revealed.

She feels self-conscious and struggles a bit, but then decides to own it: "Yeah."

And we're all supposed to have a warm glow. She's emerging from her self-imposed prison!

I felt myself going south.

As if this were not enough, we have a repeat of this moment a couple of false endings later. Violet is at a school function, and not only is her hair tied back, she's wearing COLORS!! And not just any colors. PINK!! And the boy she's been crushing on--he notices. "You look different," he offers.

"I feel different," says Violet with an air of slight wonder.

At this point I was so mad I needed somebody to talk me down. I was yelling "What do you want with that little vanilla wuss!? Go date Keanu Reeves in 'River's Edge!' Or better yet 'My Own Private Idaho,' where he's got a dog collar!" (Um, not out loud. This was family time.)

But that's Point 1. The idea that an angry, enclosed girl needs to get over it before she can find a member of the preferred gender is a truly baldfaced, shameful lie. I was an angry, enclosed girl. Know what I did? I went out and got me an angry (but not at women), enclosed guy with all the trappings that would make an angry, enclosed girl's heart go pitter-patter.

(Note that I do not necessarily recommend the whole edgy-trappings thing. In this case, they were not bad signs, but your mileage may *really* vary on that. The great thing about being an angry, enclosed girl, however, is that you are wary, watchful, and ready to withdraw at a moment's notice. Remember--you turn invisible and throw up force fields, right? Otherwise you're not really angry and enclosed, you're something else.)

So are we clear about this, though? You do not need to tie your hair back, metaphorically speaking, in order to find That Special One and walk heedlessly in spring rain with hands entwined. In fact, it's much better not to. After all, while you're traipsing through the puddles, you're going to want to discuss the broken BDSM in Wedekind's "Fruhlings Erwachen." You're going to want someone who can appreciate that, not someone who's going to wait for you to finish and then start talking about intramural volleyball.

("Schlag mich! Schlag mich!" With no safeword or risk-awareness--now *that* is a girl with problems.)

Point 2: Even if Violet's black clothes and hair-chador *are* holding her down...so what? Her anger is part of her strength--a passive strength, all invisibility and force fields, but a real one. Not easily impressed. Self-protective even in the grip of a crush. Keeper of her own counsel. Holder of her own center. Defiant of the culture. A girl who effaces herself, who refuses all prettiness, pink, and openness, is not necessarily *just* self-punishing. If there's a passive form of Kali the Destroyer somewhere in the Hindu universe, she's it.

...Yeah, I know. I'm literalizing the metaphor. See, it's really not about being angry and enclosed. That's just the form that Violet's unhappiness takes. The pink clothes and the hairbands...that's not about abandoning her sinister wisdom, that's about becoming *happy.* "I feel different," she says.

By which she obviously means "better."

How can you argue with that.

I wish I knew.