"We talked about Tootsie, the idea in Tootsie is that a man becomes a better man for having been a woman"
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Pollack is pitching Tootsie not as a zany gender-bender, but as a morality machine disguised as a comedy. The phrasing is bluntly didactic: “the idea” is the point, the plot mechanics are delivery. In his telling, the cross-dressing isn’t a prank or a gimmick; it’s a forced reeducation. A man doesn’t become “better” by finding his true self, but by being made to live inside the social penalties and constant negotiations women are trained to manage.
That’s the subtext that gives the film its bite. Dorothy Michaels isn’t just a costume; she’s an accelerated course in how power works when you lose it. The male lead’s charm, entitlement, and casual boundary-pushing stop reading as lovable once he’s on the receiving end of them. Comedy becomes a pressure test: what looks like harmless flirtation in one gender becomes predation in another. Pollack’s intent is progressive and strategically palatable, especially for early-1980s mainstream cinema. He frames feminism as experiential empathy rather than ideology, making the lesson harder to dismiss as “political.”
The context matters because Tootsie lands in a moment when workplace gender politics were moving into pop culture, but often through cautionary tales or outright backlash. Pollack offers a Trojan horse: a star-driven farce that smuggles in the humiliations and constraints women navigate daily. The line also reveals the film’s limits. Womanhood is positioned as a temporary curriculum for male improvement, which centers male growth even while critiquing male behavior. It’s enlightened, and still a little self-involved - exactly why it worked.
That’s the subtext that gives the film its bite. Dorothy Michaels isn’t just a costume; she’s an accelerated course in how power works when you lose it. The male lead’s charm, entitlement, and casual boundary-pushing stop reading as lovable once he’s on the receiving end of them. Comedy becomes a pressure test: what looks like harmless flirtation in one gender becomes predation in another. Pollack’s intent is progressive and strategically palatable, especially for early-1980s mainstream cinema. He frames feminism as experiential empathy rather than ideology, making the lesson harder to dismiss as “political.”
The context matters because Tootsie lands in a moment when workplace gender politics were moving into pop culture, but often through cautionary tales or outright backlash. Pollack offers a Trojan horse: a star-driven farce that smuggles in the humiliations and constraints women navigate daily. The line also reveals the film’s limits. Womanhood is positioned as a temporary curriculum for male improvement, which centers male growth even while critiquing male behavior. It’s enlightened, and still a little self-involved - exactly why it worked.
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