If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.
This week, Emily brings her deep thoughts about the first of two Christmas movies the Guy Girls will be covering for the 2025 holiday season: Richard Curtis's 2003 romcom Love, Actually.
While both sisters thoroughly enjoyed the 10 interlocking stories of romance, parental love, heartbreak, dubious comedy, and even dubiouser feminism when the film debuted, Curtis's storytelling style hasn't exactly aged well. Not only does Love, Actually lean into the ubiquitous early 2000s culture of fat shaming despite Curtis trying write pointed cultural commentary about how ridiculous that was through the story of Martine McCutcheon's character Natalie, but the women in the movie are consistently treated as objects and prizes to be won, rather than fully formed people. But as Tracie argues, if Curtis believes in True Love, which can happen At First Sight (with the capitalization of those romantic ideals implied), then of course he paints himself into the corner of love based on physical attraction, which means young, slender, beautiful women--and it something we see repeatedly in his movies.
There are still plenty of laughs and poignant moments in this film, so no shade on anyone who puts this in their rotation of Christmas movies to revisit each year. But it definitely works as a time capsule for where we were in 2003.
If Christmas is all around you, put in your earbuds to get it out of your head for once!
We are Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.
We both have super-serious personas in our "day jobs." No, really. Emily is a Finance writer who used to be a classroom teacher. Tracie writes and consults on social justice and mindfulness and works as a copywriter and project manager for non-profits. If you really need to see the bona fides, please visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com
For our work together, what you need to know is that Tracie is older (3 years), Emily is funnier (by at least 3 percent), and we're both hella smart, often over-literal, and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love movies and tv, science fiction and murder mysteries, good storytelling with liberal amounts of dramatic irony, and analyzing pop culture for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, and whatever else we find there.
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video version, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.
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