Breakfast at Tiffany’s, what a classic. The glamorous life of Holly Golightly is so enchanting that you just can’t help but fall in love with her. I recently watched the classic film for the first time and it left me dreaming of elegant black dresses and impossibly charming encounters with everyone I might meet.
As any hopelessly romantic 20 year old would do, I re-watched to movie at the end of a rough day. Breakfast at Tiffany’s is one of those movies known for making people feel everything all at once. But do you know what I felt by the time I finished watching for the second time? Confusion.
Confusion because I had realized that I don’t admire Holly Golightly as much as I had originally thought. Confusion because I had realized that this glamorous woman really had nothing. She’s got a cat named “Cat”, a bathtub for a couch, shoes in her fridge, a few fancy black dresses, and charisma. (Okay so I would love to have the charm of Holly Golightly, but I would also love to have more of a life than she has.)
So if I were truly a hopeless romantic I would argue with myself and say that Holly finds love in the end and that’s the whole point of the movie. Sure, love is all you need, I get it. But shouldn’t you want more than just love? Is that greedy to want more than the seemingly perfect love of Holly Golightly and Paul Varjak?
I just can’t justify the glamorization of Holly Golightly’s life. Before Paul comes along she’s all, I have to know the richest men around so they can support me. The opening of the movie is Holly running from her date who she apparently ditched the night before. Then she hunts down the richest man at her party, and then she goes after some politician from Brazil simply so she can be well taken care of.
Holly says when she meets Paul that “If I could find a real life place that’d make me feel like Tiffany’s then, then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name”. What? Tiffany’s is her happy place and that’s okay, but it’s also sort of not okay.
Shouldn’t your happy place have less to do with material goods and wealth than with true happiness? All I hear when Holly says that line is: If I were suddenly rich and could afford whatever I wanted I would name the cat.
I’ve always been told that you have to make your own happiness no matter the circumstance. That’s why it’s so hard for me to imagine being a Holly Golightly who depends on other people, specifically men, to make her happy and fill her life with meaning. I guess the point is that Paul brings meaning to her life. He isn’t rich and he loves her. Great.
I’m still not convinced that Holly Golightly is the role model we women need. She’s charming, enchanting even, but she’s not a picture of happiness and strength that we should be admiring. That’s not to say that we all have to be strong all the time, only that we should strive to depend only on ourselves for all types of mental and material security.
