It’s not one of the scenes When Harry Met Sally, which turns 30 years old this month, is best known for—not the wagon-wheel coffee table, not the paprikash at the Met, not the “I’ll have what she’s having.” It’s quieter, and more functional: The scene works mostly to suggest, in a movie about love’s contingencies, a cosmic kind of wrongness. Maybe she questioned herself. But Seinfeld walked a fine line. We want to hear what you think about this article. The will-they-or-won’t-they best friends, currently in the won’t-they stage of things, are talking on the phone as they watch Casablanca on TV. Regifters. Having high standards and knowing what you want doesn't make you high-maintenance. What I did sometimes wonder, packing a carry-on for a week-long trip, was whether I might be, in spite of myself, “the worst kind.” Movies’ magic can take many forms. Derivatives [10] Keanu The hair in those fancy photos can be very high maintenance. (“The only way the movie would work,” the director Rob Reiner has said, “was if we really exposed what men and women really felt and really thought about.”) The film’s writing, courtesy of the brilliant mind of Nora Ephron, insisted that Harry’s assessments of things were not callous, but simply reflections of how things were. (The verb gaslight, for one, which is currently enjoying a tragic renaissance, comes most directly from the 1944 film of the same name. It is also a scene, though, that made for one of the film’s many lasting cultural contributions. Low talkers. Its classifications, while often deliciously funny, also hinted at something darker, and colder. Seinfeld did the reveling so giddily that before long it created its own lexicon: Close talkers. My approach is to start from the straightforward principle that our body is a machine. Has higher than normal expectations; has a greater requirement for affection or attention; has more needs and/or demands and therefore more difficult or challenging. © 2020 Complex Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. You Hair See Famous. The following errors occurred with your submission. TheAtlantic.com Copyright (c) 2020 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. I never wondered why it was Harry who changed so drastically over the course of the film, while Sally’s most evident evolution involved her hairstyle. “You’re the worst kind,” he says, coolly. It wasn’t always people whom Jerry & Co. would sort in this manner (see also the double-dip and the big salad and the vault). “I don’t see that,” she protests, when Harry informs her that she is the worst kind. much more frequently. As of April 20th, 2012, the Quickmeme page has over 10,400 submissions and a Facebook page for "10 Guy" has 133 likes. RELATED: The 25 Funniest "Dudes Be Like" Memes. The classic rom-com invented the “high-maintenance” woman. Let HR handle the situation--but when someone becomes a near full time issue, it's a sure sign their high maintenance is an issue the company will need to address. It's not as though ladies are the only ones who are guilty of abusing social media with endless selfies. And there it has remained, its use climbing steadily over the past 30 years. And there it … Few ladies are able to jump out of the shower and run and look halfway presentable, something that many guys are able to do. Thus, I don't mind high maintenance in that sense, provided it's healthy and not channeled into a negative sense where it becomes more of a personality disorder. The man, inventing the categories, and the woman, slotted into them. Thirty years later, its reductive diagnosis lives on. Still, we've already poked fun at the dudes, so we'll be good sport and present the 25 Best "Girls be Like" Memes. (“She’s got no ankles,” Jason Alexander’s character, Mauricio, says. And waiting is not as romantic as her movie believes it to be. Notable Examples. 3. The meme continued to spread on sites like FunnyJunk, Memebase and Tumblr under the tags "10 guy" and "really high guy." When Harry Met Sally is ultimately the story of Harry’s arc: The question it asks, in the end, is not whether women and men can be friends, but whether a guy who hates almost everyone can open himself up to a single someone. This is, obviously, the clearest evidence of all.) For some, this may be more involved, but from a guy's perspective, just about any woman could be classified as high mainteanance since they have to style their hair, etc. An assessment that is also a rebuke, high-maintenance is one of those breezy truisms that is so common, it barely registers as an insult. “Well, I just want it the way I want it,” she says. “What % High and Low-Maintenance Are You?” invites another. “Ingrid Bergman,” Harry muses. And they are often popularized in the context of comedy, which gives them another kind of impunity: Calm down, we’re just telling jokes. Men--do you prefer a "traditional" woman or a "modern" woman? What I did think about, though, every once in a while, was whether the text message I was about to send might make me seem high-maintenance. “You’re high-maintenance, but you think you’re low-maintenance.”. Emotional high maintenance is a turn-off to be sure; however, in the aesthetic sense of the term, there is nothing wrong with someone who takes pride in their appearance and puts forth the time and effort to look great. Looking good, applying make-up correctly, and dressing well are all great qualities or skills to have. And so over the years, soothed, delighted, I never bothered to question why it was Harry who met Sally, and not the other way around. She shops? Doesn't equate to money or material possessions alone but may be needy in emotional attention and affection;picky, bratty, likes things her way, takes pride in her appearance, finicky. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com. Beth Ditto. According to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, it was When Harry Met Sally that popularized the term high-maintenance in American culture. All Rights Reserved. For me, the personal appearance of a girl has almost nothing to do with the way she looks. Being high-maintenance has more to do with selfishness and immaturity. A very complicated machine, but none the less a machine, and it can be subjected to maintenance and repair in the same way as a simple machine, like a car. Can’t he? It’s a movie about relationships that is also a movie about seasons—about a world that keeps spinning on its axis, its leaves changing and its people finding ways forward—and there has been, for me, something quietly comforting in that. That he proves able to evolve suggests an absolution. Emotional high maintenance is a turn-off to be sure; however, in the aesthetic sense of the term, there is nothing wrong with someone who takes pride in their appearance and puts forth the time and effort to look great. COMPLEX participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means COMPLEX gets paid commissions on purchases made through our links to retailer sites. But the term today does precisely what it did 30 years ago, as backlash brewed against the women’s movement: It serves as an indictment of women who want. “Now she’s low-maintenance.”, “There are two kinds of women,” Harry explains, anticipating her question: “high-maintenance and low-maintenance.”, Harry has anticipated this question, too—of course Sally would wonder. Their words can become part of you, as can their flaws. The salmon, but with the mustard sauce, and that sauce on the side. (She is annoyed to be dismissed as high-maintenance? Every girl loves it when Drake comes on. Maybe there were times along the way when she almost said something to Harry but didn’t, understanding how easily her preferences could be dismissed as inconvenient. One of Harry’s swaggering pronouncements—“No man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive”—is also the movie’s central premise, and its question is meant to leap off the screen and into the open spaces of audiences’ lives. As for Harry’s cold assessment of the world’s “two kinds of women,” the effect might well be the same for the women who watch the film as it was for the one who starred in it. Here are Harry and Sally, who should be together but are not, engaged in the drowsy conversation a couple might have—but over the cold stretch of physical distance. The comedies were deeply similar in their contours. 2. Require (ing) a high emotional investment or en excessive amount of money. Thirty years after When Harry Met Sally premiered, in this moment that is reassessing what it means for women to desire, it’s hard not to see a little bit of tragedy woven into comedy’s easy comforts. There’s a scene midway through When Harry Met Sally that finds the rom-com’s title couple, one evening, in bed—separate beds, each in their respective apartments, shown on a split screen. that is merely a matter of opinion really. According to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, it was When Harry Met Sally that popularized the term high-maintenance in American culture. It’s so bluntly efficient. And, because of that, they infuse the film. But how about—? Both were propelled not so much by plot as by snappy dialogue; both were, in their ways, shows about nothing that reveled in their reductions of the world and its workings. So you are basically saying that unless a woman actually takes time all the time for hair, makeup, etc then they are not presentable? High-maintenance. I’ve found it impossible to hate Harry, too. “How High Maintenance Are You Really?” one test offers. There’s cankle—whose coinage added one more entry to the ever-expanding list of body parts women might feel insecure about—popularized by the allegedly romantic comedy Shallow Hal. It neatly captures the absurdity of a culture that in one breath demands women do everything they can to “maintain” themselves and, in the next, mocks them for making the effort. No man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. The man exempt; the woman, implicated. As it happens, the 30th anniversary of When Harry Met Sally falls around the time of the 30th anniversary of Seinfeld, the first episode of which aired on NBC in July 1989. Maybe she knew that, despite it all, women who just want it the way they want it are still assumed to be wanting too much. I care about the way I look and I like it when others do too. Mimbos. There’s MILF, popularized by American Pie; and cougar, popularized by the 2001 book Cougar: A Guide for Older Women Dating Younger Men; and cool girl, introduced by Gone Girl; and gold digger, an insult of long standing recently revived by Kanye West. What if they—? Constantly telling you that you want "too much" or that you're "high-maintenance" is kind of counterproductive. The show was animated by the idea that people are often more interesting as caricatures than they are as fuller characters and, especially in light of current events, that makes for an uncomfortable proposition. Our editorial content is not influenced by any commissions we receive. “It’s like the calf merged with the foot—cut out the middleman.”). Are picture memes a thing of the past? But they are also one of his defining character traits. 9 - They handle money poorly. She wears makeup? Et cetera. Which is also to say that it might lead them to question themselves: Which one am I? “On the side is a very big thing for you,” he concludes. (On Mallomars: “the greatest cookie of all time.” On Sally: “Empirically, you are attractive.”) Harry’s taxonomic tendencies double as defenses, yes, and as attempts to exert control over life’s chaos. ), But high-maintenance is one of a particular subgroup of pop-cultured insults that are applied, most commonly, to women—a category that whiffs of feminist backlash. COMPLEX participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means COMPLEX gets paid commissions on purchases made … There’s Monet (Cher in Clueless: “From far away it’s okay, but up close it’s a big ol’ mess”). Require (ing) a lot of money or attention to appearance. "Food for thought: One woman said she would not share time with a man unless he was her ideal of Mr Perfect".