Stereotypical Scenes in Cinema 2

Not as Dumb as She Look

              The movie Legally Blonde is focused around the stereotypes of blonde women being dumb in society. The movie focuses more on one blonde girl, named Elle, and her adventure of applying to Harvard Law and facing the challenges set against her by the stereotypes of blonde women. Elle is portrayed as a beautiful blonde woman who most people think are stupid and can take advantage of her. In one of the earlier scenes, Elle believes her boyfriend Warner is going to purpose to her so she goes out with her friends to go dress shopping for the special occasion. In the store the sales women sees Elle and her friends trying on different dresses and tells her co-worker “There's nothing I love more than a dumb blonde with daddy's plastic”, sales women then takes a red dress and rips off the “half off” tag and approaches Elle. The saleswomen asks Elle if she has seen the dress and lies telling Elle that the dress is brand new and they got it yesterday. Elle pretends to get excited asking a bunch of different questions and the saleswoman agrees with Elle even though she has no idea what Elle is talking about. After a few questions Elle tells the sales woman that the type of stitching Elle asked about was a lie and would ruin the dress. Elle then tells the saleswoman that she saw the dress in the store over a year ago and tells her that if she’s trying to sell it to Elle it shouldn’t be full priced, and that the saleswoman picked the wrong girl to fool.

            In this scene we get to see early on that Elle is not as dumb as society makes her out to be. This scene shapes the way we see Elle and that she may not be the smartest she can pick up different details most people don’t get and we see that when she wins the case for the big trial in the end of the movie. The scene about the dress also shows us that Elle is not shy to speak up and prove people wrong and to question their authority when given a challenge about stereotypes. Her behavior about proving people wrong eventually carries over into class where she will challenge the professor’s ideas and question her professors. This contradicts Tannen’s argument about boys and girls using language differently in the classroom because Tannen states that boys are more likely to challenge their teachers and professors, while the girls will accept their professor’s word and try to not challenge anything.  Elle is the opposite of the girl stereotype set by Tannen and frequently speaks out in class in order to learn and disprove the stereotypes set against her. In the end it makes us wonder, even though the stereotypes set by society have the potential to be true, can they always be disproved?