Masculin Féminin
Paris today: what do young girls dream about? But which girls? The checkers at Simca who are too tired after work to make love? Eighteen year old manicurists and hairdressers whoring in posh hotels? Schoolgirls who know their Bergson and Sartre and nothing else because their parents shut them up at home? The average Frenchwoman doesn't exist.
Godard is frequently misinterpreted as being a misogynist for his portrayal of women, but what his critics don't understand is that the perspective he offers is meant to discuss the objectification of women and the commodification of culture, especially in film. And since women's sexuality plays a big role in culture as commodity, women are portrayed as such intentionally.
Masculin Féminin begins from the male perspective, where our protagonist tells us that he has just finished military service. "Sixteen months without comfort, money, love, or leisure. Subjected to absolute authority twenty four hours a day... Just like modern society, in other words."
In the beginning, we are introduced to a young man named Paul, who is depicted as sensitive, despite our being prefaced by his stereotypical male experience.
…
When asked about birth control, Miss 19 seems embarrassed, though it is clear she is informed about the pill and other preventative measures. In regards to politics, Miss 19 displays a vague awareness of the war in Vietnam and overtly admits that she doesn't understand political party distinctions. This suggests that a woman who isn't necessarily interested in activism or sociopolitical matters still keeps herself up to date on issues regarding women's sexual freedom. It is unclear whether Miss 19 finds these topics important, though she is aware of them in a way that she is not about politics. Showing us this, Godard sheds light on an otherwise cryptic element of female culture: despite the absence of the "average woman," all modern women, regardless of their involvement with social or political affairs, knows enough about reproductive advancements to have a developed opinion on the subject and even take a stance.
In another part of the film, we learn through a female friend named Catherine-Isabelle, that Paul's girlfriend Madeline considers birth control 'shocking' and therefore doesn't use it. Catherine-Isabelle reveals that she herself uses a "thingamijig" that she received from their friend Elizabeth. The unnamed contraceptive had been brought to her from America by an employee of Air France. But Catherine-Isabelle tells us since Madeline doesn't use anything, she is afraid of becoming pregnant from Paul. Paul's response, "The idiot. I'm old enough to know better," is a typical uniformed response I've frequently heard from men. And it is an approach that, more often than not, ends just as the film ends, with an unwanted pregnancy.
….
The abrupt change of mood in the final scene ends the film with the quintessential alternative to birth control. The film is over before we find out what Madeline decides, leaving the protagonist to remain charismatic if we allow her to, while effectively touching on the brutal alternative to the modern 'woman as object' sans birth control. Perhaps Godard kills Paul in order to avoid controversy around his inclusion of abortion in the film's discussion of reproductive freedom, allowing the audience to sympathize with Madeline. Though these days almost all women either know someone or are someone who has had a surgical or medical abortion, back then abortion still had to be performed either at home, or clandestine with a willing doctor. Even today, with considerable access to abortions, this choice is traumatic, socially stigmatized, and the most undesirable of all the reproductive options available. Still, many women choose not to use birth control and to engage in casual sex, and most, if not all women who've slept with men have experienced a pregnancy scare, using birth control or not.
Prior to effective methods of birth control, termination was the only option for avoiding an unwanted pregnancy. Various herbal abortifacients or fairly violent procedures had been administered on record as early as 1000 BCE. Since the 1960s western society has openly rejected normative values surrounding sex and marriage, perhaps due in part to the accessibility of birth control and later, abortions, but also because unmarried people have been sleeping with each other for centuries and were finally ready to admit it. Yet conservatives still find it necessary to impose regulations on reproductive freedom, and to make efforts to take away funding from public services for reproductive health.
It seems that in the US the alternative to birth control often ends up being abortion. Considering that giving a newborn up for adoption has lost popularity in more recent times, what compromises does a woman make if she births an unwanted child? When abortion isn't performed with an unwanted or unintentional pregnancy, the consequences are unclear. Allowing oneself this choice is essential to equality, and it seems that every woman, at the very least, prefers to plan a pregnancy in accordance with her own personal timeline. Even Miss 19, despite her wanting a child in the future, believes it to be important to live her life independently in her early youth. Plus some women prefer not to have children, and so should they be deprived of sex because of this?
At this point, when even religious people engage in extramarital sex, asking people to abstain from sexual activity is beyond foolish. So what then, if not birth control?