Yahoo Lifestyle The Myth Of The Perfect Partner
Even in Weird Science, with a compliant, perfect woman of their own creation, Gary and Wyatt don’t end up getting the girl.
Was there a teenage boy alive in the mid-Eighties who wasn’t tormented by the sight of Kelly LeBrock?
I was one of the multitude. I clearly remember my hormonal panic as a zit-flecked 13-year-old beheld this acme of womanhood in a cinema showing Weird Science. Girls like her actually existed. Better, they fancied dorks like me. There was hope!
Nearly three decades later, she’s still causing hearts to race.
When recently I posted a still of LeBrock from the same movie on my Facebook wall, dozens of male friends, some of whom I hadn’t heard from for years, were almost teary eyed with nostalgia. They came from all walks of life, from different points of the globe. It was a group purging of long dormant lust.
“My all-time favourite,” one lamented. “She was one of my first crushes,” sighed another. “That is all,” quipped a third.
That is all indeed.
Could a woman be any more perfect? A supermodel face, upper-crust English accent, full, cherry-red lips and the sort of anatomical symmetry missing even from a Victoria’s Secret catalogue meant LeBrock was hot property – and Hollywood was quick to catch on.
A slew of high-profile magazine covers, that Pantene commercial (“Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful”), two hit films in a row – 1984’s The Woman in Red and Weird Science a year later – and then … well, then she met Steven Seagal, married him, and that was that.
LeBrock effectively disappeared from public view, making some rock-headed action movies with Seagal, popping out three of his kids and then getting a divorce nine years later. By that stage, we’d all forgotten about her and so had the movie business.
But it’s worth remembering just how far ahead of its time Weird Science actually was. It still teaches us lessons today. Far from being an utterly implausible piece of nonsense, it was a premonition of a not-too-distant future in which technology increasingly transects our personal lives and our expectations of relationships. Watching it now, it also has a lot to say about the impossibility of perfection.
To recap, Weird Science was a teen comedy in which two high-school nerds, Gary and Wyatt (Anthony Michael Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith), inspired by a screening of Bride of Frankenstein, decide to “simulate a girl” so that they can “use it… ask it questions… put it in real-life sexual situations and see how it reacts”.
Gary and Wyatt use their Memotech MTX512 home computer and hacking skills to unlock a chest of Playboy mags and feed a scanner with images of things they want their dream girl to possess: a pair of hot legs, modeling shots of the real-life LeBrock, Ludwig van Beethoven (for his hands), a big pair of red lips, Albert Einstein (for his intellect), a Harry Houdini poster (for his problem solving), a David Lee Roth publicity photograph (for his free spirit and dirty mind).
Supported by some hocus pocus the computer does its work. And at the end of a pyrotechnic maelstrom a door explodes and, before the boys, framed by a glowing hot-pink mist, stands LeBrock. She’s alive. ALIVE!
“What would you little maniacs like to do first?” she smirks with the sort of puckers made for swallowing a man’s finger dipped in whipped cream.
GALLERY: One man's attempt to tick off his bedroom bucket list
What follows is a feel-good story about two bullied, socially awkward boys gaining some self-confidence and acceptance – all facilitated by the magical “Lisa”, who sadly never gets around to claiming Gary’s or Wyatt’s virginity.
It’s a 94-minute exercise in suspending disbelief and not even my impressionable 13-year-old self was going to believe anyone could make a perfect woman with a piece of crap from RadioShack. I wasn’t that stupid. Getting a great girlfriend takes a lot of work and a lot of luck.
But there have been times when I’ve suffered from a Weird Science mentality when it comes to women: thinking a “Lisa” is out there and just a keystroke away. I say suffered because it didn’t bring me closer to finding a partner I can spend the rest of my life with – which is what I’d like.
Advances in computing, GPS-based dating apps such as Tinder and cheap plastic surgery for women (who hasn’t had a boob job?) has made finding our own personal “Lisa” seem possible. When I got divorced in 2007 after a ten-year relationship, I was determined to find out. I went on a dating bender with the mission of seducing the ideal woman for me, wherever in the world she was. I had my own mental checklist and, as far as I saw it, could afford to be picky.
Prominent clavicles. Swimmer’s shoulders. Ski-jump nose. Firm, large breasts. Flat stomach. Toned runner’s arms. Tight butt. Long legs. Olive skin. Fine wrists. Graceful neck. Small ears. Cara Delevingne eyebrows. Wardrobe of Breton stripes and faded khaki. Sun-bleached hair. Post-graduate education. The wit of Dave Allen. The erudition of Christopher Hitchens. Good family. Kind heart. And, yes, Kelly LeBrock lips. If only I’d had that magical scanner from Weird Science, I could have fed it subscriptions to Spanish Vogue, Women’s Health and The New Yorker.
MORE: What straight couples can learn from gay relationships
I came close a couple of times to finding my own “Lisa”. But I also broke up with women for the most ridiculous reasons: unattractive private parts, saggy breasts . . . one girl got marched because she didn’t know who Benito Mussolini was when I mentioned him in conversation one day. That’s correct: I ended a relationship with an otherwise commendable woman – she was pretty, she was fit, she was great in bed, she could cook, she enjoyed cleaning up after me, was I mad? – over a fascist dictator who’d been dead since 1945.
My pickiness was over the top. I deserved to sleep alone.
But the more time went on, the more it dawned on me that to get anywhere near having a relationship that was durable, I was going to have to let go of some of these ridiculous expectations. I had to be realistic. Everyone is flawed. And I only had to look to LeBrock as she is today to see that immutable truth writ large.
LeBrock’s second marriage, to Seagal, ended bitterly. She’s now on her third. She turns 55 in March, and though she’s still beautiful and has retained the physical architecture that brought her fame in the 1980s, she isn’t what she used to be. (Nor is Seagal, by the way.) She’s as normal as the rest of us – not the perfect woman by any stretch of the imagination; rather, a much-needed reminder that perfection, even if it’s attainable, is fleeting. A raindrop on a leaf.
There’s the temptation to think that everything we enjoy in life is upgradeable; that finding a better, sexier woman is just as easy as handing in a beat-up iPhone with an outdated operating system to replace it with a shiny new one featuring all the bells and whistles. Or that there’s something perfect just around the corner; we just haven’t found it yet with our armoury of GPS-enabled gizmos.
MORE: Five men who cheated reveal why it was the best thing they've ever done
Even in Weird Science, with a compliant, perfect woman of their own creation, Gary and Wyatt don’t end up getting the girl. Life can be like that. It rarely always turn out the way we think it will, even when technology makes us feel that everything we desire is within reach.
At 55, Kelly LeBrock is more of a woman than she ever was in Weird Science. She’s still alive – and she’s real.
