It’s a tale as old as time: Boy meets girl. Boy dumps girl. Girl follows boy to Harvard Law School and bests him at every turn. Such is the story of one Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) the paradigmatic, vaguely feminist heroine of 2001’s Legally Blonde. A dilettante turned Juris Doctor, Elle’s journey from lovesick puppy to legal eagle is both wildly improbable and highly aspirational. Ever the over-achiever, she one-ups the fickle fantasy of showing up an ex by dismissing him entirely to find both herself and the perfect pair of Prada heels.
But what makes Elle stand the test of time as a pop culture heroine is her specific insistence on taking up space as a woman. Elle draws her strength and confidence not just from her smarts and her ingenuity, but from the performance of femininity itself, and she uses that performance as a means to create and signify power.
With a sequel, a Tony-nominated musical and a third film carded for 2020, it’s clear that Elle Woods has never lost her appeal. But what remains so uniquely compelling about her as a character is her story’s defiant insistence that the ditzy, looks-obsessed dilettante can still have value in the world in a way that isn’t attached to her body. Her near-delusional sense of confidence is an asset in situations that presume she is incapable. She barrels forward because she has set her mind to it, and it never occurs to her that she cannot.
2001 feels like a lifetime ago, and a modern-day reading will show the film’s age. Elle’s presentation of gender and femininity is stubbornly binary in a way that would rightly attract critique today. But most aspects of Legally Blonde hold up, and in many ways, it’s ahead of its time. In contrast to popularly accepted ideas, the movie reinforces again and again that embracing the feminine is not a deterrent to professional success, but can, in fact, be a valuable asset that should be cultivated and lauded.
The film begins when Elle’s college sweetheart Warner Huntington III (Matthew Davis) dumps her because she isn’t “serious” enough to bring along on his hypothetical future senate run. After a period of protracted mourning, she conceives of a plan to get into Harvard Law alongside him so that he’ll see just how serious she can be and eventually take her back. But instead of rewarding Elle’s single-minded focus on love with a happy reconciliation, Legally Blonde allows her to learn that the peppy enthusiasm that Warner sees as a liability is simply a different path to success.
Refreshingly, the story never punishes Elle for her naivete or optimism. Rather, her setbacks all come from her own decision to focus not on law school, but on Warner. When she is embarrassed or humiliated, it is usually due to a failed attempt to impress him.
In fact, the villains of her story are the people who denigrate her for her kindness and willingness to have faith in others. The film’s initial antagonist is Warner’s new fiancee Vivian Kensington (Selma Blair) who treats Elle like a pinup girl who doesn’t belong. And in true early-aughties fashion, the only other significant female character in the class is Enid Wexler, (Meredith Scott Lynn) a snobby, self-identified feminist who shames Elle for the way she dresses and contributes to upholding the very stereotypes feminism seeks to disavow.
But part of Elle’s understanding of femininity is a reliance on other women for friendship and solidarity, demonstrated most clearly by her involvement in the fictional sorority Delta Nu. Given that, it’s not a surprise that she ultimately wins over all the other women in the film. By the story’s midpoint, she has befriended both Vivian and Enid, partly by demonstrating her dedication to the law and dismantling the easy perceptions they had initially constructed of her. Vivian in particular, (intentionally established as a plainer, more dour foil to our heroine) bonds with her over the abysmal way they are treated while working together on a high profile case, and the apparent ineptitude of the men around them. She makes special mention of Elle’s loyalty to their female client Brooke Windham (Ali Larter) and demonstrates that she too values friendship and fidelity. They may be very different women from very different backgrounds, but they are still dealing with the same professional challenges, even if they may be encountering them from opposite ends of the spectrum.
Ultimately, the film’s actual villain is Professor Callahan (Victor Garber). In a plotline that feels plucked from the #MeToo stories of today, Callahan “rewards” Elle’s hard work with an unwanted sexual advance that leaves her questioning her skills and doubting her abilities. Has she actually be excelling in the program? Or has Callahan simply been allowing her to fail upward, all the better to grant himself access to her? Like many of the women whose stories have been reported over the last two years, Elle initially decides that the solution is to quit the profession altogether.
But one of the recurring motifs of Legally Blonde is that women always helps Elle find her way back to herself, and it is the elder stateswoman Professor Stromwell (Holland Taylor) who tells her point-blank that she’s stronger and more capable than simply turning tail. (Encouraging, but perhaps not altogether useful or practical advice outside the internal world of a movie.) Brooke’s faith in her follows next when she fires Callahan from her employ and opts to have Elle defend her instead. When she wins the case, she proves her detractors wrong once and for all.
There’s an argument to be made that Legally Blonde is actually a cruel reflection of the things women won’t be able to achieve. What are the chances of a 1L law student winning a big murder case that all the resources of a major law firm couldn’t crack? But the revolution is in the fantasy. Elle doesn’t win the case by using her “superior legal mind” but by catching a witness in a lie with her knowledge of hair care and grooming. Like Marvel’s Agent Carter did later (and to slightly better effect) Legally Blonde leans into Elle’s femininity as a way to help her achieve her goals. She doesn’t win the big case despite her bouncy hair and pink suit, but because of it. She doesn’t adopt the masculine as a means to excel but instead brings the masculine into a feminine realm.
Legally Blonde’s construction of Elle’s transformation is significant because it casts aside the assumption that women are the characters who need to assimilate into hostile conditions. Elle adapts, but she remains her true self, bending her circumstances to fit into her world on her own terms. The film demonstrates an understanding that there are different kinds of knowledge that are all contextually important. The likelihood that after-perm care will factor into a murder case are slim to none, but that small detail of the story allows the audience to enter into Elle’s area of expertise and gives her a venue to display the hard-won knowledge she has earned through her cultivation of the feminine.
Elle is but one of many ways that women have been depicted onscreen, and in many circles, she might not be counted among the most significant. But her existence signals an understanding that even when women exist in a way that is theoretically identical to the social ideal, there will always be ways in which she falls short and must work to make up the difference. Elle had to work to make it at Harvard, but there are lots of women who’d have to work to make it in Malibu, too.