“Can you imagine catching your husband
with another woman in your bed?” Is the “other woman” the villain
of someone else’s story or the misrepresented protagonist
of her own? For hundreds of years,
the Other Woman has been a figure of fear and hatred for
wives and girlfriends alike. She’s a threat to the
traditional family unit, who must be stopped, “If you ever come near my family
again, I'll kill you, you understand?” the whore to the wife’s Madonna,
with sexual talents and methods of seduction that can tempt
even the most devoted family man away from the marital bed, “A woman never steals another woman’s
husband. They usually go willingly.” “Sounds like you have
a lot of experience in that area.” always wanting something
she can’t have, “I just wanted more than
I thought I would want.” often motivated to “steal”
a married man for his money or connections rather than
for true love. “So take my advice.
Put your mind on your alimony.” Puzzlingly, it often seems like
the Other Woman is the only person who can strip a man of his agency
entirely, when the rest of the time, he’s in control. So is this really a legitimate way
of looking at any woman? In more recent depictions, from
Taylor Swift songs to Sex and the City, the other woman has been humanized,
and we start to see just how blurry these questions of who’s entitled to
someone and which person is the other can really get. Yet the Other Woman remains
a powerful—often hated—taboo. “You expect me to stand here next to
my best friend, who's been lying to me about f[BLEEP]ing my ex-boyfriend!” Here’s our take on The Other Woman
on-screen—and how she’s really just another girl looking for someone to
love and understand her. We’re so excited because
we have a brand new episode of The Takeaway on the Prime Video
YouTube channel, and it’s all about The Wilds. The Wilds Season 2 is out on May 6. We are getting ready by digging into
all of the mysteries and unanswered questions of Season 1. “Once upon a time,
two plane crashes were staged.” We thought it was just the girls
subject to this social experiment, but now, it turns out there was
a group of guys going through the same thing. The Twilight of Adam? It’s gonna get really interesting
now that we have both the girls and the guys in this situation. “Don’t scream.” Season 1 of The Wilds left us with so
many questions, a lot of cliffhangers. Where is Nora? What side is Dot on? What’s going on with Shelby? Is Martha alive? And what’s gonna happen
with the guys? “The boys were the perfect
control group.” This just gets crazier and crazier. Just when you thought you were
getting your bearings, something came in to uproot
or change it. You think that the big mystery was
the social experiment, and then, there are more mysteries. So be sure to check out The Takeaway
on Prime Video YouTube channel, let us know your thoughts and
your theories, and get ready for Season 2 of The Wilds on May 6. “I was wondering, why is it
that all the interesting guys are always married?” “Well, maybe that's why
you find them interesting, the fact you can't have them.” Throughout history, mistresses have
been a cultural symbol of power. “If he were not mewling in bed
with that witch, he would be chasing down Pompey.” Royalty, aristocracy, and politicians
notoriously kept, and continue, to keep them. Many historic royal mistresses, such as
Charles II’s lover Nell Gwyn, are more famous today than
their partners’ queens. The mistress as a status symbol has
continued into more recent times, too; a 1980s study showed that
the richer a man was, the more likely he was
to have an affair— over 70% of men who earned above
$60,000 had cheated on their wives. Examples of women who cheat
track with this, too, as demonstrated in the recent remake of Scenes from a Marriage and the
movie The Other Man, where wealthy, high-powered women
seek romance outside of their marriage. “I fell in love with someone. He’s the CEO of an Israeli startup
that we’re buying out.” Historically, though, the
exploration of affairs on-screen has mostly focused on men
cheating on their wives. “How long have you been married?” “Nine years.” And despite the fact that it’s the
husband’s choice to cheat, the Other Woman is often portrayed
as the main problem— because while the husband is the
one who actually breaks a vow, it’s as if the Other Woman is breaking
an unspoken vow of sisterhood. “Ex-boyfriends are just
off limits to friends. That’s just, like,
the rules of feminism.” On top of that, she’s portrayed as
irresistible, and hellbent on destroying a marriage—and what husband isn’t
powerless to refuse that? In the original version of The Women,
we get an archetypal portrayal by Joan Crawford as Crystal Allen—
she is soulless, does unconscionable things just to get at a man’s money,
and admits she doesn’t love him. “You've got everything that matters. You’ve got the name, the position,
the money.” “My husband's love happens to mean
more to me than those things.” “Oh, can the sob stuff, Mrs. Haines.” This gold-digging aspect often seems
to be the motivation in older portrayals of the Other Woman, although a
really early example occurs in 1915 silent film A Fool There Was,
in which Theda Bara plays a vamp whose sole desire is to ruin
mens’ lives—not for gain, but just for the fun of it. The Mafia’s relationship with
mistresses is famous, as it’s been explored in iconic movies and shows
like Goodfellas, Casino, and The Sopranos. “Stay the f[BLEEP] away
from Tony Soprano. You call, or go anywhere near
him or his family, and they'll be scraping your nipples off these
fine leather seats.” This is a strong, almost systemic
elicitation of the Madonna-whore dichotomy of the wife and the
Other Woman, showing the men want to keep the domestic and sexual
parts of their lives separate. But it never seems to end very well
with the mistresses, or comares, who always want more. “Well, what do you think,
I'm some f[BLEEP]ing whore?” “Just calm down.” “No, you think you’re just
going to come over here and f[BLEEP] me?” And despite it being acknowledged
that this is the way Mafia men behave, it understandably devastates the wives. “You have made a fool of me
for years with these whores.” Traditionally, though, the Mafia mistress
has a different role to other women. In Italian culture, the wife is
“above all others”— she’s the Madonna incarnate—
and as such, made men can’t share their criminal activity with their wives
for fear of implicating them. The comare is not just a beautiful
mistress—although her beauty is highly prized—but she can also be a
confidante and, according to Giovanni Fiandaca, the author of
Women and the Mafia: Female Roles in Organized Crime
Structures, mistresses’ homes are sometimes even used as safe houses
for criminal activity. And these arrangements definitely
don’t go both ways for the genders. When Carmela falls in love with
Furio in The Sopranos, it’s a matter of life and death—despite Tony’s constant
philandering, he would certainly kill Furio for getting together with Carmela. “Yet, you are modern enough to use
a cell phone to call Italy and every other f[BLEEP]ing place
to threaten the guy's life.” “Oh, that's right. Certain people see him,
he's a dead man.” So the other man doesn’t always
have it so easy on-screen, either— he can be imperiled, like Furio,
or obscene, like Julian, the man Bridget’s mom leaves her dad for
in Bridget Jones’s Diary. “Between you and me, I'm not entirely
sure that Julian isn't a bit of a shit.” Still, the other man is a rarer character
than the Other Woman, who’s a huge presence in film noir and
other early movies. In these explorations, it's always
important that the other women are punished for being harlots. Maybe the ultimate example of this kind
of comeuppance is Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction—
the original bunny boiler. “You're trying to move him
into the country, and you're keeping him away from me. And you're playing ‘happy family.’” In the film’s finale, there's a moment of
redemption where the cheated-on wife, Beth, shoots Alex to death. This wasn’t the original ending—
initially, Alex was supposed to kill herself and frame Dan
for her murder. However, test audiences didn’t respond
well to that storyline, because, as Glenn Close, the actress who played Alex,
put it, the original ending was film-noir worthy, but the audience
wanted something “more cathartic”— they needed Beth to get her revenge. “The audience wanted to believe that
that family might be able to survive, so they got their catharsis
by shedding my blood.” Victory for the wife is a key tenet of
many of these movies—essentially, an example of “good defeating evil.” But why is the Other Woman
portrayed as evil? One theory is that the Other Woman
shatters our dreams of true love. One real-life example was the
vilification of Angelina Jolie when she g ot together with Brad Pitt—who was
married to Jennifer Aniston at the time. Jennifer, most famous for her role as
Rachel on Friends, was always portrayed as a down-to-earth, girl-next-door type,
and her marriage to Brad was a glossy realization of “America’s sweethearts.” “People were obsessed about
your marriage, and then the-the divorce. I think it’s because you guys
represented the picture on the wedding cake.” Meanwhile, Angelina was painted
as a vamp, known to be into darker sexual pursuits such as knife play
and and carrying a vial of her ex-husband’s blood. It was like Brad was cheating on us,
as the idea of the perfect marriage that we all had was discarded
in favor of something the public perceived to be darker
and less wholesome. Likewise, Marilyn Monroe’s
rumored affair with JFK while he was married to Jackie
was interpreted as a vamp versus virgin narrative. Marilyn was widely recognized
as the sexiest woman of her era, while Jackie was portrayed by
the press as prim and perfect. In Mad Men, the team tasked with
creating a campaign for Playtex puts forward the idea that
every woman was either a Marilyn or a Jackie. “Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe.
Every single woman is one of them.” The reality, however,
was more complex. Rather than proving this binary,
Marilyn and Jackie were more alike than anyone cared to admit,
and appeared to have had mutual respect for, or at least interest in,
one another. There are film and TV examples
where we feel we've been cheated of the perfect couple by that irritating
other woman, too. Derek and Meredith's relationship
being thwarted by Rose in Grey’s Anatomy and
Ross and Rachel's by Emily in Friends—these “other women”
aren’t even mistresses, but they’re still disliked by audiences
because they’re getting in the way of something viewers crave. “And if he's with Rose,
that means he's not with you.” Or when the wife or girlfriend who
we really back is being cheated on, we get very villainized “other women”
examples, like Lydia in Sliding Doors. “I wanted to see what this girl you seem
to have no intention of leaving, despite the occasional pre-orgasmic
suggestion that you are, has that is so unleavable.” Often, the Other Woman isn’t just
vilified—her life is literally deemed worthless. In The Great Gatsby, Tom’s mistress,
Myrtle, is killed when his wife, Daisy, runs her over in a car, and Tom isn’t
even affected—he only seems interested in covering it up. “You have nothing to worry about. Let me take care of things,
take care of you.” Likewise, mob shows and movies
often explore how mistresses can be objectified, dehumanized, and
treated as disposable. They might be murdered—as
Giuseppina is by Dickie in The Many Saints of Newark, or
Tracee is by Ralphie in The Sopranos— or they might threaten, or commit,
suicide, as is the case with Tony’s girlfriends, Irina and Gloria. “If you go, I'll kill myself.” “Gloria Trillo, she gave me
a ride home that day? You know what Jerry told me
about her? She died.” But starting in the 2000s and 2010s,
we saw a spate of film and TV portrayals that humanized the
Other Woman—including two different movies called The Other Woman,
as well as The Sweetest Thing, Enchanted, The Other Boleyn Girl,
and 13 Going On 30. Even Gloria Trillo in The Sopranos
could be sympathetic. “Why the f[BLEEP] didn't you help her?” “Sometimes, you can't.” “She was a good kid.” One of the main purposes of this
was to put the focus back on the cheating man, who is the
actual person causing damage in his relationship. These movies are successful because
it's so rare to see men get their comeuppance for this sort of behavior
in real life, “That’s my money! No!” and the truth is that the
Other Woman often is vulnerable and lonely. She’s probably suffering
thanks to the man’s behavior as well, and really needs people who
like her in her life. In the Sex and the City love triangle
between Carrie, Big, and Natasha, Carrie is an example of the
Other Woman who we’re invited to sympathize with because
she’s the protagonist. “You're the other woman!” “I am not the other woman. I'm not. I mean…I know I am,
but I am not that woman.” She was also the girlfriend
to begin with, before Big met his wife, Natasha—a fact that
gets at how, in reality, cheating frequently does involve
exes, potentially blurring the lines in people’s minds as to who first
belonged to whom. Viewers have spent seasons getting
invested in Carrie’s love story with Big, so when prim, perfect-seeming Natasha
comes along, we don’t root for her. In the sequel series And Just Like That…,
Natasha is humanized in a way she never was initially—we get a chance
to see how much it hurt her, and also she acknowledges that, because the
Carrie and Big love story predated hers, she felt like the Other Woman. “I’ll never understand why he ever
married me when he was always in love with you.” Meanwhile, in Scandal, the writers go
one step further and we’re encouraged to actively root against the wife because we
so want Olivia and Fitz to be together. “I love you.” “Your wife is ten feet away.” “I love you.” The identification with the Other Woman
could even become a little flippant like in Ariana Grande’s 2019 song,
“Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored”— though the video playfully suggests
Grande’s character is actually interested in the girlfriend (or, because the girlfriend
looks like her, it may be a comment on self-love). Sometimes, movies from the 2000s
and 2010s era show us the Other Woman without even articulating
that that’s what she is. In Bridget Jones’s Diary, we never
explicitly hear from Mark Darcy that he’s seeing Natasha, but his family are
all pretty convinced that the two of them are going to get married. “To Mark and his Natasha!” So, if we break it down, in this instance,
the audience’s beloved Bridget is actually the Other Woman—but we barely notice
because the story leads us to feel she and Mark are predestined. Plus, Natasha is haughty and unpleasant,
so we don’t mind when she loses her man to down-to-earth, normal Bridget. “You like me just the way I am.” Actually, there’s a real-life reason why
Bridget doesn’t come across as a clear-cut Other Woman. In life, often, the category
isn't so apparent; it’s often not the case that one person is the "primary" partner
and the other is the "other" woman. There’s an example of this in
Game of Thrones, when Tyrion marries Sansa,
although he is already in love with Shae. And sometimes, the Other Woman
doesn’t even know that she is the Other Woman until unfortunate
circumstances bring her and the wife together—which is the case
in Shiva Baby. “He's married?” “Yeah-huh.” “Are you sure?” This also kind of happens to Bridget
when she discovers Daniel with the American woman, Lara, who seems
like the annoying woman but turns out to be his fiancé, and it’s unclear which
relationship has been the earlier or primary one in Daniel’s life. “You haven't only just met her.” “No. No, I got to know her pretty well when
we were in the New York office together…We're engaged.” In extreme situations, people can
become the “other” partner without even knowing it—like in Cast Away,
when Chuck is stranded on a deserted island and declared legally dead,
so his girlfriend Kelly, eventually, starts a family with another man,
only to be shocked when Chuck returns. “What's your daughter's name?” “Katie.” “I always knew you were alive. I knew it. But everybody said
I had to stop saying that, that I had to let you go.” And when it comes to
queer relationships, for much of our history,
a same-sex partner had to be the “other” person in society’s eyes,
hidden in secrecy, even if the relationship predates either person’s
marriage. This can lead to the feeling, almost,
that the wife or husband is the “other person.” “She'll have lots of money,
which is essential. She is an innocent, so she will suspect
nothing, and she seems nice. I think we could be happy.” 2005’s Brokeback Mountain, about the
forbidden love between two gay men in the 1960s, centers the romance
between two characters who do go on to marry women and become
the “other man” in each other’s lives (at least in their wives’ view), “Jack Twist?” “No.” “Jack Nasty!” but in their hearts no one could
ever be primary over each other. “I wish I knew how to quit you.” “Then why don’t you?” Even on Friends, while Ross was hurt
and continues to take it personally that his wife Carol cheated with
“other woman” Susan, “You slept with another woman?” “Oh, you're, you’re one to talk.” clearly, Carol and Susan were
in love, starting a forever partnership, and Carol’s infidelity was an
unfortunate step on the path toward her honestly understanding
her orientation and true love. Music is a medium where it’s easy
to identify with the narrator, no matter where they fall
in a love triangle, because you’re immersed in the singer’s emotion
and less preoccupied with judging them. In Melanie Martinez’s “Pacify Her,”
the song’s narrator is an unrepentant homewrecker who articulates exactly
this blurriness of what makes someone belong to someone else. She sings, “Someone told me
‘stay away from things that aren't yours’ / But was he yours,
if he wanted me so bad?” In Dolly Parton’s iconic “Jolene,”
she pleads with a potential Other Woman to have mercy, and not to take her man
“just because [she] can.” On Taylor Swift’s album, Folklore,
she narrates a love triangle through three songs—“Cardigan,” “Betty,”
and “August,” with “Cardigan” narrated by the girl
who is cheated on, “Betty” by the cheating guy,
and “August” by the “other” girl. Swift herself says that the
protagonist of “August” isn’t a “bad girl,” claiming: “She was trying to seem cool
and seem like she didn’t care because that’s what girls have to do,
and she thought they had something very real…
And then he goes back to Betty.” Still, that sympathy for the
other woman hasn’t always held fast for Taylor: she released
the track “Better than Revenge” in response to rumors that Joe Jonas
cheated on her, viciously shaming the “other woman.” And it is really understandable
for the scorned wife or partner to be angry at the person they perceive
to be destroying their happiness— especially if that other person knowingly
disrespects the marriage or partnership, and even more so if the other person
is a trusted friend. It’s the reason why viewers were
so shocked when Cassie from Euphoria slept with her best friend
Maddy’s ex, Nate. “I would have never done this to you.” And contemporary narratives like
The Gilded Age still employ the character who’s conniving to steal a married man’s
affections as a one-dimensional villain. “Haven't you ever wanted a woman
who thinks only of you? Mrs. Russell has many qualities,
but she has her own campaign to wage in the world. She has no time for yours.” Yet most of these stories make it clear
that, ultimately, it’s the partner in the relationship who’s accountable for the
choice of whether to be unfaithful or not. In Agnes Varda’s feminist movie
Le Bonheur, the mistress is the reason for the wife’s suicide, and then
the mistress literally just replaces the wife in the family. And ultimately, this reveals an underlying
coldness in the husband and how he regards these women as
implements for his idyllic “happy” life. It’s satisfying to watch portrayals that
bring humanity and sympathy to the Other Woman and the wife or
girlfriend character, but there’s something even those 2000s movies
miss about the reality of relationships. The fact is that it’s not possible to
confine anyone to a label. The cheating man may be deeply
conflicted, or terribly unhappy; the other woman may be desperately
seeking love, or a sense of self-worth— as we see with Cassie. “Aren't you afraid people are
gonna look down on ya?” “At least I'm loved.” Psychoanalyst Herbert Strean (2000)
claims that “happy people don’t cheat,” so there’s often a deep-seated reason
why marriages fall apart due to infidelity. The Other Woman also takes on
a different meaning today, when people are more likely to have
open relationships. Approximately 4% of adults are in
open marriages—although of course, polygamy and polyamory are situations
that should only be entered into with the express consent and understanding
of all parties. The fourth season of The Crown portrays
the real-life love triangle between Prince Charles, Princess Diana,
and Camilla Parker Bowles. “Well, there were three of us
in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.” To Diana, her husband’s devotion to
this “Other Woman” is a burden that dooms their marriage,
while, in Charles’ mind, Camilla is his rightful love,
because he’s loved her for many years and his family are in the wrong
for preventing their marriage. The Crown again illustrates this murky
question of whom one belongs to when you consider a person’s history
with an ex or the reasons out of someone’s control why a relationship
might have ended. But it ultimately makes Diana out to be
more of a victim than Charles in this situation, because he wasn’t
above board with Diana. She wasn’t informed,
as a very young girl marrying a prince, what she was
really getting into. “To be the protagonist
of a fairytale, you must first be wronged. A victim.” Portrayals like these—
and even older ones— show that it’s really the
tiptoeing and secrecy that’s so unhealthy and sinister. There wouldn’t be such a thing
as “another woman” if we all articulated our feelings better,
discussed our relationships and desires more openly. The Duchess shows a real-life,
odd realization of this when the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire
come to an agreement that his mistress can live with them. “The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire,
and Lady Elizabeth Foster.” It’s not that this arrangement isn’t
painful for the Duchess at first— the patriarchal setup of the time
means she is unable to be with the love of her life, after all—
but she grows to love them both and gives them her blessing to marry
after her death. In Friends, we see that Joey’s mom
actually benefits from his dad cheating on her, because he treats her better,
and that means she’s happy to turn a blind eye to his infidelity. “Do you remember how
your father used to be? Always yelling, always yelling,
nothing made him happy. And he’s been more attentive,
he’s been loving, it’s like every day’s our anniversary.” It makes us question whether we
could accept another woman, if the marriage improved—
or whether, if we acknowledge that we aren’t necessarily always
attracted to our spouses as the years go on, we might still maintain
a relatively good marriage. In The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, after
Midge Maisel finds out her husband Joel cheated, she gets
hours of comedy out of Penny Pan. “Do you know I've seen her twice
with her shirt on inside out? Penny. Twice. Twice? You can only be trusted to butter
people's corn at the county fair.” More importantly, the loss of Joel
to his mistress is part of turning her into another woman—a different,
bolder, more independent person with a more fulfilling existence. But what about the mistress’s existence? Can she be fulfilled by staying
someone’s “other woman”? Well, maybe. “I have it all on the East Side. He has someone else
on the West Side.” “So you're okay with that?” “Yes. I don't have time
for a full-time man. I have a full-time job.” As Nicki Minaj says in
The Other Woman: I think you need someone
with something that’s gonna keep him busy.” The key is remaining honest,
consistently checking in with your partner on their needs
and where they’re at, and making sure that everyone
involved is on the same page. Ultimately, we need to demystify
the motivations of the Other Woman. She’s rarely in it for financial gain
or social climbing, as she was so often portrayed to be in the past—
rather, she’s just like any other person,
looking for love or connection. We should be accepting that
life is messy and contains all sorts of people—
all of whom are main characters in their own stories. In 2019, Lizzo was quoted in
The Cut talking about a lyric in the song “Truth Hurts.” She said, “I sing,
‘I will never ever, ever be your sidechick,’ but originally
the lyric was ‘a sidechick.’ Bitch, what about sidechicks! I don’t want to exclude them! I don’t want to make them
feel bad.” We could all take a little of
Lizzo’s attitude forward with us the next time we’re quick to judge
the Other Woman: she might just be a friend
we haven’t met yet. “I am with you. I have always been with you. Are you with me?” We have a new Takeaway episode
on Prime Video YouTube channel. We are talking about The Wilds. It’s been such a wild ride. Season 1’s ending set up really
intriguing thought experiments, as well as characters that
we want to root for, and maybe even see a few
get taken down, like Gretchen. “It’s not voyeurism if it’s research.” Well, we know from Season 1
Gretchen is this disgraced academic, “Ladies and gentlemen,
the tide is finally turning.” and ostensibly, her goal is to
prove that women are better at governing themselves than men. There is something going on here:
What is Gretchen’s endgame? It can’t be just an intellectual
experiment to prove that girls are better than guys. I’m really interested to find out
what her and her funders’ true agendas are. Looking at the Season 2 trailer
definitely teases out that we’re going to find out more
about not only the agenda, but also what happened
on the island. I think there are going to be
some surprises. Maybe there was more time
between the shark attack in the end of Season 1 and when
they’re in the bunkers. Maybe they weren’t rescued
right away like we might have initially thought. Don’t forget to check out the
latest episode of The Takeaway, just in time for the newest season
of The Wilds, premiering on May 6.
