Alright Judd Apatow,

You did it. You made us cry. I want to blame it all on the Loudon Wainwright III track you craftily played over the end credits of "Knocked Up," but I can't. I'll admit it. I believe that there is a part deep inside of you—way, way "Freaks and Geeks" deep inside—that understands characters that might appeal to the lady douchebags among us.

First, we'd like to commend you on your achievement of crafting some of the most enduring male douchebags of film. The films you've written, directed, or produce have been rife with these lovable douche-cads: Seth of Superbad, who coined the term "shmashmortion"; Ben of Knocked Up, who endearingly cradled his bong instead of his pregnant girlfriend during an earthquake; David of 40 Year Old Virgin, who memorably opined, "You know how you know you're gay?"

And yet, that mastercraftsmanship was eerily absent when forming the 40 Year Old Virgin's three main female characters—you know, that one drunk slut, that one sober slut, and the one nice mom lady who didn't have sex at all. I didn't catch much of a glimpse of it in Superbad, either, which featured teen versions of the above—you know, the one sex object who didn't drink and the other sex object who turned into a drunk slut at the film's climax. And "knocked up" pretty much sums up the emotional states of the two main ladies in that film. Douchey, sure! Funny, not so much.

But we know you have it in you to create some supreme weed-smoking, Gandalf-impersonating, laundry-soaped-beer-stealing, shmashmortion-joking, responsibility-shirking, non-sex-object, non-mother, fun lady douchebags. We even caught sight briefly of this Apatowing lady-douche, in Knocked Up's stoner girlfriend Jodi. She was in the movie for like three seconds.

But we know there is a part of you that would like to create an entire 90-minute storyline around this elusive lady-douche. We suspect this part of you is right next to the part of you that introduced the women of the world to James Franco (THANK YOU for that, by the way).

Seriously, Apatow, all you really have to do is take the characters you already have and slap vaginas on them. That's like, only one step further than what you usually do whenever you make a new movie.

Sincerely,

Concerned Lady Douches of America

Photo via Wikipedia

I have a confession to make: I love Dude Comedies. Any film where Two to Five Douchey Guys Shirk Their Societal Obligations to Embark on a Night They'll Never Forget can probably coax ten bucks out of me. I'll even watch the Dude Comedies where all female characters are relegated to the Fun-Hating-Wife or Slutty-Sex-Object category, as long as it allows for maximum high jinks. Superbad: Loved it! Old School: Great! 40 Year Old Virgin: Totally convinced me to overlook the whole chastity message! Talladega Nights: Watched it!

I understand these movies are literred with sexism and homophobia and penises; I am simply immune to it. My condition has become so severe that this is looking pretty good to me, honestly.

But no Dude Comedy can draw me in as douchily as the Judd Apatow Dude Comedy. I am powerless to it. I have a theory: Paul Rudd is often one of the dudes. But even a Clueless pedigree can't justify my apparent obsession with man-children, marijuana-fueled Lord of the Rings fantasies, and underlying date-rape themes.

Help me.

In this week's Sexist Beatdown, Sady of Tiger Beatdown tries. We laughed, we cried, we had a shmashmortion.

SADY: hello there lady. are you prepared – prepared, that is, to debate the fine points of dude comedy?

AMANDA: i can't say i'm as prepared as you are, sady. but i am willing to confess: i believe that i enjoyed nearly all the films you profiled in your apatow series. when i saw them. in the theater.

SADY: yes, it's true: apatow has become my great white whale. he is basically all i think about these days. i dream in Apatowvision. well: i enjoyed some of them too! (shhhhhh.) I enjoyed "Knocked Up" immensely, for example.

AMANDA: i CRIED at the end of knocked up. i was on a really bad date, which may have had something to do with it.

SADY: OH GOD. YOU SHARE MY TERRIBLE SECRET. i cried too. also, broke up with the dude i saw it with?

AMANDA: same. well i'm glad we've cleared the air.

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Judd Apatow craftily inserted this song into the film's end credits in order to make me cry.

SADY: yeah. my reactions to "knocked up" kind of define my relationship to the Apatow canon. I was totally digging Leslie Mann's character – oh, that poor lady! She is totally at the end of her rope! – and then left the theater, and discussed it with people, and realized that YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE ROOTING FOR PAUL RUDD. In that particular sub-plot.

AMANDA: i think i had the same reaction as you did, honestly. i thought she was sympathetic, but totally pathetic. all of apatow's male characters are pathetic, too, but they seem to ease out of that gracefully without having to think about it too much.

SADY: right – plus, they are pathetic in a totally fun way! they get to hang out and do bong hits and fart on each others' pillows and such! so, by the end, where it's like, "sadly, we realize that procreative monogamy with one of these strange 'woman' creatures is necessary to maturation" you kind of get their sadness at giving up the pillow farts and lightbub battles. whereas women are just grown-ass-adults by the time they hit puberty, apparently. or at least they're scripted that way.

AMANDA: yeah, so the women are just haggard at the end. one thing your reviews always touch on are these coiteries of man-children that apatow scripts. and you mention the rejoinder from defenders of the movie that 'you're not supposed to LIKE or IDENTIFY with them.' and i do think that you are supposed to like these characters, and even like them for (and not despite of) their date rape punch-lines. but they're still in a context, i think, where they're there to provide a contrast to the hero of the story. their douchiness must be overcome, basically.

SADY: yeah, exactly. they're given such loving attention, and their little world of date-rape jokes and vague bromosocial lady-avoidance is presented as so much fun. so you forgive them for being immature in order to forgive your own immaturity, like, "well, my wife may be at home sobbing but i can't help it! i'm a regular bro!" and then you get a Valuable Life Lesson that sticks for maybe ten to fifteen minutes.

AMANDA: ... but they're funny!

SADY: it's true! sometimes they really really are! I subconsciously repeat Jonah Hill's pronunciation of "abortion" as "shmushmortion" at least once a week! and then i realize it's a joke about making a lady have an abortion because obviously her fetus is YOUR decision!

AMANDA: yeah. and apatow's versions of women i cannot excuse. they are either bitches or whores. but caricatures of douchebags, even lovable ones, i cannot resist. see: paul rudd in wet hot american summer. i think it's just possible to love the character and not the character if they were a real person / your boyfriend.

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SADY: exactly. question: where the lady douchebags at? where are the stoned ladies that can't get it together to have an actual apartment, and get jobs that require nothing of them because they're afraid real jobs would be too much of a commitment, and pretend to be gandalf or some business when no-one's looking? the ladies who would rather watch "the muppet show," again, than do anything useful with their lives? WHERE ARE THOSE LADIES? Because I want movies about them! They exist! So I am told in a way that has nothing to do with my own personal life, at all.

AMANDA: i know, which is why I desperately want Apatow to write a movie for them. partly because i think his brain might explode, but also because i think it would be funny.

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SADY: exactly. like, writing a movie about a lady that is not a sexy/stupid harlot or a knife-tongued scold would be fantastic. because the closest we've got to an Apatowomany character, right now, is Juno. I DON'T WANT JUNO.

AMANDA: sometimes i look at popular culture and i think of the female characters who have had abortions and i get really sad that like carrie bradshaw is the only one i can think of. but that's a tangent.

SADY: yes, well, my forthcoming feature movie film, "50 First Abortions," will be an exciting new direction for film, i think.

AMANDA: indeed. I think we should start a letter campaign that mirrors the request of Pixar to make a film with a heroine who is not a princess.

SADY: but, you know? i think that women have all the same maturity/commitment/not-being-an-idiot problems that these dudes have. PLUS, what with all the work we have to do to make our bodies presentable, there are many more occasions for gross jokes about our inherent schlubbiness. HUMOROUS BIKINI WAXING SCENE? I think so!

In this week's friendly neighborhood chat, Sady of Tiger Beatdown and I hang up our cardigans, lock the door so Mr. McFeely can't come in, and talk about something that's been on our mind for a while: those rapey filmmakers who rape you again, in the movie theater. Hey, kids. It's okay. It's not your fault. And you don't have to let Seth Rogen touch you in that way ever again.

SADY: good afternoon or evening!

AMANDA: any time is a good time for high-brow discussion on the art of raping women on film

SADY: ha, yes! i myself have been spectacularly dour and serious on the subject as of late. i think i'm going to stop posting words and just type frowny faces from now on. seth rogen, :(. it's funny, because i think that telling stories about rape from the perspective of ladies who've lived through it can be totally important, you know?

AMANDA: are there any rape scenes in movies that you think are important? i think the scene in Boys Don't Cry was important.

SADY: yeah, that one was huge. it was intense and it was scary and it totally centered Brandon Teena and the fact that the rape was a crime about power and gender and the fact that they viewed him as "really" a woman and wanted to drive that home through forced sex. it's funny but i think a lot of the more interesting rape scenes i've seen have been in TV. Mad Men—Joan gets raped, and it's the same thing, it's about the fact that her boyfriend is threatened by her power and her sexuality and wants to take that away from her. I guess what I'm saying is that you can have rape in your movie and I will NOT EVEN YELL AT YOU, if it's a story about sexual assault and what that means and what it does to a person. not something that uses sexual assault to add spice or shock value or whatever. because the thing about rape: once that shit happens, you have to LIVE with it. it's not a thing that you can just resolve with some punching or with a laugh line or whatever.

AMANDA: yeah, and I think it's an interesting dynamic when it happens that way—particularly when the rape is committed by the protagonist, as in Observe and Report (ostensibly). because, really, rape is actually a pretty common thing to happen to a woman, and a lot of times the people who commit them are otherwise normal seeming friends, etc.—people who might even be protagonists in motion pictures!

SADY: Ha! Indeed! I think the thing about "Observe & Report" style rape, which is not even that different from your usual how-do-we-make-it-clear-this-guy-is-a-villain-oh-I-know-raping move, is that in each case it's kind of about deploying rape as your "edgy" move. Oh, look, rape, BUT SHE LIKES IT, isn't that crazy? Oh, an incredibly brutal rape, LOOK HOW BRUTAL THIS RAPING IS, isn't that crazy?