11/15/2023 0 Comments Cameron 10 things i hate about you![]() Their overprotective father, who for some reason likes riddle-based parenting, decides the best way to keep his daughters from becoming teen mothers is to decree his youngest can't date until his oldest does, which is, of course, impossible - as I said, Kat listens to Bikini Kill.Įnter Joey (played by Andrew Keegan, aka the teen father on 7th Heaven), who bets his friends he could date and sleep with Bianca even in the face of her father's rule. Bianca is a popular sophomore whose status is so solidly cemented she can somehow wear the same exact outfit I wore to Easter dinner when I was 5 - black Mary Janes, ankle-high frilly socks, a simple dress, and the cardigan Landon gets Jamie in A Walk to Remember - and still be cool. Kat, a senior, is a social outcast (by choice) and listens to the punk band Bikini Kill. If it's been a while since you've rewatched the movie (co-written by Karen McCullah and Kristen Smith, the women also responsible for Legally Blonde, Ella Enchanted, and She's the Man, providing the internet with at least 50 percent of its girl power reaction GIFs), 10 Things I Hate About You is the story of Kat and Bianca Stratford, two sisters as different as you could possibly be. As she tells her sister, Bianca (Larisa Oleynik), "You don't always have to be who they want you to be." Kat was radical not just because of the rebel girl trappings but because she seems so unaffected by her classmates' disdain for her unwillingness to play a part. I had never wanted to embody a character more, especially as a middle schooler who wholeheartedly believed this could be my high school future if I only bought enough long peasant skirts and read enough Simone de Beauvoir. Watching 10 Thing I Hate About You as a preteen, Stiles' Kat was everything I believed a strong independent feminist had to be: a woman who felt no need to impress a guy, who wasn't afraid to be aggressive on the soccer field, and who read a copy of The Bell Jar with almost comically oversized font - held perfectly upright so anyone passing would know she was only interested in reading deep feminist thoughts. Seeing a teen girl embracing her unlikability seemed like a revolution. And it still does, even after the scores of "strong female characters" that we now get the pleasure of seeing in high-school themed movies that have come after her - think Emma Stone in Easy A, or Saoirse Ronan in Lady Bird. ![]() After watching countless teen movies that hinged on the female protagonists' desperation for approval, the quest to ensure their classmates liked them, seeing a teen girl embracing her unlikability seemed like a revolution. Perky (Allison Janney), explains that Kat's classmates often describe her as a "heinous bitch." Kat takes in the descriptor, pauses to consider, then a quirk of a smile transforms into a look of triumph. The scene begins with Kat offering up a beyond SAT level vocab word to describe a romance hero's "quivering member" - "tumescent," in case you have a scrabble tournament coming up. Rather, I think of the exchange between Kat (Stiles), the 1999 film's shrew, and her romance novel-writing guidance counselor Ms. When I think about 10 Things I Hate About You - which I do a lot as an English teacher who frequently uses the seminal '90s teen rom com to teach Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, on which the Julia Stiles-starring movie is based - I don't think about the most iconic scene: Heath Ledger's Patrick singing Frankie Valli on the bleachers of a high school I still think looks more palatial than Hogwarts.
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