Dear Matt Damon, and Ben Affleck,
I am writing to publicly shame you for the disservice you have done to women all along the Eastern seaboard. After watching The Town last night, I must call you out for creating an urban myth so suddenly pervasive, it is causing single, educated women anywhere in the vicinity of Boston, to seek out any good-looking man in his twenties, wearing an Adidas track suit, a Red Sox cap or a Notre Dame Fighting Irish leprechaun tattoo - preferably all three. I am talking about the mythical creature that is the brooding, yet sensitive, Southie Man..
Matt and Ben, you started it all way back in 1997, with Good Will Hunting, by creating the character Will, an emotionally tortured genius struggling with his identity. Is he a Harvard-level scholar, or is he a knuckle-head who sits around hole-in-the-wall bars watching Bruins games? Oh, and he's cute and has washboard abs. We all swooned as he courted snobbish Minne Driver. Ben, you kept it going in The Town, having shaved of more than few pounds (I'm sure because my totally in shape BFF Jennifer shamed your ass onto the treadmill), and looking quite good, to play a bank robber from Charlestown who is so sensitive, he falls in love with the woman he and his cronies kidnapped during a robbery. It seems the panties of intelligent, socially conscious women drop like empty beer cups at a Sox game around this particular species of man.
This mythical creature is akin to the one created by the likes of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Could this person exist? Sure, there are plenty of extremely attractive, drug-free hookers who will only kiss men they love - I'm sure if Julia hadn't met Richard Gere she would've just started charging extra for that service later down the road - but is it the rule rather than the exception? I don't think so. But Prius-driving, liberal arts-college-attending women everywhere hold out hope after dating overly-polite, conflict-averse men who are in touch with their feelings who they met in their Gender Studies class, that somewhere there is a hot, wicked-smaaaaht Southie , who just chooses to work in construction, and is so adorably jealous and masculine, he will sweep them off their feet by threatening to beat the shit out of that guy who keeps trying to friend her on Facebook (see photo). This myth is so pervasive, so common, one douchebag I met in a Boston bar actually told me he was from Lowell with the same you-are-totally-going-home-with-me swagger as if he had told me he drove a Ferrari.
So thanks for nothing, Matt and Ben. I'd throw your cronie Mark Wahlberg into the mix, but our sitter canceled and we didn't get to see The Fighter. He might get a pass though, since his character's romantic interest is a tough-talking, hard-drinking, fist-throwing redhead from the same neighborhood*. You two are off living your lovely lives, with your wives and kids, having poisoned the minds of young women everywhere. You owe it to the world to make a movie in which one of these romances results in marriage. We need to watch these tough guys chafe under the yoke of domesticity, arguing over the fact that a track suit is not, in fact, appropriate attire for Back to School Night in Newton, where the well-heeled girlfriend-turned-wife will insist they live, and hitting kid with a belt is not "tough love". She will question what the hell was really so wrong with that writer who sent her poetry who worked in the coffee shop and he will spend his Saturdays screaming, "Will you shut up? The Sawks are on!"
What do you think? Coming to theaters in 2012?
Love,
MM
*Upon seeing the porch-fight scene involving the girlfriend's (wife's?) family, H turns to me and say, "Look, it's your family!" Smartass.
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