You know the restaurant scene in Notting Hill? The Hugh Grant character defends the honour of his magical girlfriend when she is the butt of some sexist banter from some vulgar brutes, who don’t realise she is sitting round the corner. In many languages, says one, the word for actress is the same as the word for prostitute. Hugh just can’t bear it: he confronts them with an angry eye-flutter, telling them to bloody well shut up, and then Magic Girlfriend appears and tells them that they have small penises. It’s one of those scenes in which Richard Curtis helps us to understand what is good and what is bad these days.
Well, at the risk of resembling one of the nasty sexists in this scene, I want to suggest that the new orthodoxy has its limits.
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