When I watch women in films with negative female stereotypes, whether they are trading scratches (Bride Wars, 2009), equating adequate closet space with love (Sex And The City, 2008) or parsing the subtext of male speech (He’s Just Not That Into You, 2009), I do what most men would do.

I roll my eyes and wonder if women everywhere have lost their minds.

We all need a mindless bit of escapism sometimes but, the horror of the packaging.

When women want a fight, then they should have a real fight.

But Hollywood smothers Bride Wars, a movie where two best friends tussle over a wedding date, with trite best-friends-forever morality.

It is fine to see oneself in the needy women of He’s Just Not That Into You.

But how do you put up with the stale sitcom jokes and the smugness of the men?

The shallow consumerism of the Sex And The City and Confessions Of A Shopaholic is porn, pure and simple, and there is nothing wrong with that.

But why did they feel it necessary to tie a big-love-conquers-all ribbon over it? Yes, it is rude to define a person by their lowest forms of entertainment.

For all I know, the women who watched Bride Wars may prefer to be defined by the Brahms concert they attended after the movie, but I doubt that happened very much.

But what you do when you are slumming it culturally says a lot more than what you try to consume when you are wearing your self-improvement hat.

Does this all mean that women enjoy the pain of seeing just how petty, shallow and neurotic they can be?

If that is not the definition of masochism, I do not know what is.

And it does not get any better when Hollywood tries in an obvious way to portray women as strong.

The film-makers either do not understand what strength means or do not have the courage to cast the roles properly.

Case in point: Meg Ryan as the world’s least convincing chopper pilot in Courage Under Fire (1996) or more recently, the simpering Kristin Kreuk as a pugilist in Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li.

There is a joke about the Sex And The City movie that says that of the few men who watched it, half were gay and the other half were straight men who had done something very bad.

If you get the joke, it means you understand the psychology of men and how strongly they feel about spending 90 minutes or more in a room where there is no escape.

There is some comfort women can take, though.

In the stupidity stakes, men’s comedies are unbeatable.

As seen through the lens of mainstream comedies, women at their worst behaviour are trivial.

Men are just this far from being charged with crimes against humanity, as anyone who has seen the Rob Schneider comedy Big Stan (2007) will tell you.

There is an unintentionally hilarious interview with the actor while he was out promoting the film’s DVD release.

In telling the story of how the film was made, he told the interviewer with a straight face how hard it was to get studio financing.

The story of the film, for those who did not catch it, is about a man (Stan, played by Schneider) who schemes to avoid being raped while in prison. “In the end, I had to go indie,” he said, sounding injured.

Oh, the slings and arrows a true artist must endure.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.