We're just not that into it

Within 10 minutes of watching the newly released film 'He's just not that into you', we had given out our names and telephone numbers to a hot looking man and been checked-out by several others. Of course, the telephone numbers were to secure a table in a busy Melbourne restaurant and the men checking us out were old enough to be our fathers. Reality? Check. Of course women everywhere are not lining up in the cinemas or cramming into plush velvet seats for a dose of reality---they are lining up in the cinemas and cramming into plush velvet seats to escape from the reality of dating, millennium-style. What they get is an hour and a half of Hollywood gloss smeared over the all too real and highly gendered stereotypes and 'unwritten rules' about love, sex and relationships that cause both men and women everywhere daily confusion---sometimes with tragic results. 'He's just not that into you' is of course based on the best-selling dating self-help book by the same name (released in September 2004), and, like the book, is written by some of the same story writers behind the enormously successful 'Sex and the City' television series. The film it seems will be as successful as the book itself---with more than 42,000 fans already signed-up to its Facebook page and glowing reviews posted on the wall. Yet why is it that so many 20- and 30-something young women, who have grown up in the aftermath of the sexual revolution and formal gender equality, remain at the whim of such outdated gender stereotypes and unwritten rules?