Drew Barrymore, Gray Sweaters, and the Intricacies of the Female Mind

I have a job that is probably unlike yours. I can give a million reasons why this is so, but for the purposes of this story I'll only say that everyone in my office wears blue jeans and has a 12-inch television with cable capabilites sitting on their desk. Obviously, these two perks are kind of rad.

I sit across from a girl at said job I call Kiki. Kiki is not her real name and she says she doesn't like it, which I surmise is why I address her as such. She is tall and thin, has fairly prodigious red hair and was apparently a highly decorated volleyball player during George W. Bush's first adminstration. She plays something like 393 instruments and has a bizzare vendetta to bring down talk show host Rachael Ray. I know no one else in the world like Kiki.

We also disagree on just about everything. Kiki calls me an idiot at least once a day for being sexist, or insulting, or both, which I never get mad at because 80 percent of the time she is probably correct. The advantage of this clashing of opinions is that it leads to some pretty interesting discussions -- sassy "he said-she said" exchanges not unlike low-grossing George Clooney-Michelle Pheiffer romantic comedies from 1996.

On Sunday, I was working on my computer when I received an instant message from Kiki telling me that her "favorite bad movie from high school" was on. My interest was immediately piqued, being a scavenger of all things culturally relevant from the preceding decade. My remote soon found its way to Comedy Central, which was airing the 1999 Drew Barrymore-vehicle Never Been Kissed. Having previously seen the film in theaters with a old girlfriend, I immediately explained to Kiki that I took umbrage with the premise of the picture.


"This movie is bullshit," I protested via the powers of AIM. "I know Drew wasn't looking her best here, but there's no way she wouldn't have been laid (let alone kissed!) by the time she was 25 or whatever. She was foxy and had BOMBS."

Though it was clear she was trying to suppress laughter, Kiki apparently didn't believe that mammary glands should be likened to explosives.

"You are a pig."

Kiki then told me that the best part of the movie was on the horizon.

"The gray sweater is coming up."

"Huh?"

"Michael Vartan is going to come onto the baseball field to kiss Drew Barrymore and he's going to be wearing a gray sweater."

Apparently, the outerware of the former Alias star and Jennifer Garner paramour had caused quite a stir in the mind of Kiki and another female friend of hers. To me, Vartan appeared to be wearing fairly standard v-neck garb. What was I missing here?

And that's when I realized Never Been Kissed is female pornography.


por·nog·ra·phy (pôr-nŏg'rə-fē) Pronunciation Key
n.

1. Sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal.

It all made sense! When the handsome and kind Sam Coulson (Vartan) walks onto the baseball field to kiss the sweet and relatable Josie Gellar (Barrymore), every woman watching begins to fantasize. The scene is especially effective in that the film fades to black immediately afterwards -- leaving the female audience to picture their own happy ending -- the marriage, the house in Westchester, the four kids, etc. I call this the "crack ending" in a chick flick, because 90 percent of women can't get enough of it and they'll always come back for more. This is why Matthew McConaughey owns a $10 million ranch in Texas.

To me, Hollywood romantic comedies and San Fernando pornographic films are far more similar than people realize. They both illicit more-or-less the same response in terms of their target audiences. They just take different routes to get there. In the end, they get people off, in their own unique way. The two industries may share little in common on the surface, but at the end of the day they are delivering the same fantasy-based message to the brains of their respective demographics.

I see no difference between Michael Vartan's sweater and Jenna Jameson's vagina.

"What are you talking about? That makes no sense," Kiki responds, writing off my theories as the rantings of a madman. "You're being an idiot."

Like I said, 80 percent the time she is probably correct. This time she is not.