Misogyny in The Handmaid’s Tale and the Wrinkled American Dream

by Nicolette Westfall

Imagine you are oh, say, 28, and your boyfriend is, say, 81, and you have come to the realization that in just a few short years (when you turn 35 or thereabouts), your biological clock is going to slow down, according to examples of research . Though the reasons are complex , you’ve invested everything you have into the relationship; breast augmentation, fake nails, perfect hair, the right bikinis—well, you’ve done just about everything to become the breathing Real Life Doll (not to be confused with Real Dolls (warning: adult site)) that he wants!Hugh Hefner and his mansion of willing, youthful gaggle of sex objects (women) is exactly what The Handmaid’s Tale character, Offred, encounters when she is sexually enslaved for reproductive purposes to a powerful grey haired man. Unlike Holly Madison, though, she does not want sexual relations with a much older man, and would, if she could, spit on him (71). Unfortunate for Offred, silly woman, Fred is the man on top, just as Hefner, but it isn’t fantasies of money and fame–treating men like Hefner as “success objects” that keep her on a leash, it is the far-right Christian fundamentalist colonization of women’s bodies realized . Although the rules indicate he is only supposed to sleep with her for breeding purposes, he wants her for intimacy as well, and forces her to fake sexual enjoyment (264, 321).

Offred, an enslaved woman, presents an opposite to Holly in her apprehension about having sex with a much older male, the only similarities between the two women being that they are both enslaved to misogynist men who are well past their productive prime. While Commander Fred is able to mechanically get off without the aid of drugs (116), Hefner admittedly relies on Viagra . Though they may be the wealthiest men, with all the girls, they no longer have what it takes to breed successfully. For Holly, it is sad to note that Hefner suffers from the same affliction that every other man out there does, aging, which alters the motility of their sperm, negatively influencing the sperm’s ability to do such things as travel properly when released. As males age, chances of mutations such as Apert syndrome in offspring increase .

Regardless of ability to breed, both misogynists, Fred and Hefner, have an endless supply of flesh, which leaves little time for worrying about the trivial lives of their women. On Holly’s desperation to have a baby with him, Hefner, notes , “I think ‘probability’ is probably an overstatement.” It is Holly’s worry, not his.

Being a misogynist can be a lot of work, as both men indicate. Hefner admits to focusing a bit more on a few select women rather than many by slimming down his “herd” to please his No. 1 gal, Holly. In similar fashion, Fred discovers that he’s lonely for something else, and forces Offred to engage in Scrabble games with him (174). It is a forbidden pleasure that arouses him. He forces her to kiss him (175). It is not unlike Hefner forcing Holly to enhance her physical appearance because he was not happy with the woman until she looked like his ideal . While plastic surgery and breast implants are illegal in Fred’s Gilead, he does manage to attempt his own version of a Real Doll with Offred. He dresses her body up like a whore and takes her out to a club to have excitingly forbidden (289). For both men, it is a game and women are the toy pieces.

Fred justifies the Gilead regime’s complete control over women’s bodies (excluding suicide, of course) by arguing that it’s better than the “Meat Market” and women no longer have to mutilate their bodies with things like plastic surgery (274). Hefner asserts that Playboy gives women sexual freedom, but former Girlfriend Izabella St. James argues that it simply makes it easier for men to score with women.

It isn’t that Hefner and Fred don’t care about their sex objects; it’s just that, as Fred admits to Offred, men naturally need a variety of women. Instead of making them wear different dresses in the pre-Gilead period, powerful men simply possess more than one woman (298). Offred and Holly can’t argue against the very nature of the misogynist man.

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret, The Handmaid’s Tale. Doubleday, Canada. 1998.