Its a boy girl thing - a sort of review

Hello there. On Saturday, a day where I was kicking back and trying to forget about work for the weekend, I discovered a really great film. This film was not a classic like 'the Godfather' or 'Battle Royale', rather it was a nice story. The story is as follows...

In a nice American suburb, two teenage neighbours living beside each other, one a guy one a girl. Essentially, they don't like each other very much and there are some pretty generic stereotypes about their families - one is working class, all star jock (American) football player, the other a preppy bookworm girl looking to go to Yale. The film begins, roughly, one week from the "biggest football game of the guys career, where all the scouts will be at. It is also one week, from the girls interview for Yale. So... long story short, these two end up buddied up on a school trip, argue in front of a statue of a Mayan god and wake up in each others bodies. Don't you just hate it when that happens?

So, about 15 minutes in and I had some gender swapping, crude jokes, an obvious "simmering" romance between the two leads and numerous childish jokes about the two leading characters getting used to the bodies of the contradictory sex. Don't get me wrong, I was giggling at the film - call me old fashioned but there is something pretty funny about a teenage guy in a girls body trying to get to grips with putting on a bra - while commenting that "these things are hard enough to get off".

Anyhow, long story short, the two characters get used to each others bodies, begin to fall in love, there is some ridiculous scandal involving a "homecoming queen", slumber parties as well as an amusing scene where the woman in a mans body goes to football practice while the man in the woman's body goes to the ladies shower room. Tactical awareness indeed.

So, the film winds up with the following scenario - the two darlings decide to coach each other, the guy teaches the girl (in his body) how to "harness" his strength to play football for the last game and she teaches him how to dress and pass the entrance interview for Yale. The climax is the Football game where, needless to say, the fairytale ending ensues... the girl in the guys body scores the ultimate game winning touchdown and the guy in the girls body gets back from the interview and.... well...you don't know. You just don't find out... So this got me thinking...

The girl in the guys body gets the immediate win. She / He gets the immediate glory of success, he / she led the team to glory and gets carried off the pitch. It made the whole thing worthwhile.

The guy in the girls body however does not find out, he / she has to wait. He / she has to wait to find out not only the result of the interview, but for the girl, it was an interview she was directly invested in without being directly involved. Obviously, she gets into Yale , and both get their reward, but though the picture painted both rewards as commensurable, they felt somehow different.

What struck me about the 'getting into Yale' reward, was that it was individual, fundamental and reliant on hard work of the mind. The individual success was down to the hard work of one person (or, for the sake of the movie, the two working together), but ultimately it was down to individual success. Though the two people had to work together, you are left in now doubt that the girl would have walked the interview - she was reciting Romeo and Juliet for crying out loud (and by the great big love in at the end of the movie, I kinda was...)

The flip side, the football reward, the scout saying great game we'll get you a scholarship etc. The important thing here, for me, was that the whole thing was about the importance of the team - though the success was led by one person, the whole team triumphed, and that was the way it was portrayed on screen.

I thought about this in a business context and asked myself what would matter more to me - what would I prefer? Individual success and reward or leading a team to success. Both have recognition and rewards. You could argue that the success is diluted by relying on the team to archive it, or you could argue that the success is magnified by sharing it with the team. Individually, you could say that the entrance to Yale was more rewarding than any team exercise as it was all down to one person, and that person delivered. The flip side is that, intellectually, it is better to stimulate more people and that is something that individual success misses.

I guess, there is immense virtue in both of these types of success, but what used to really appeal to me was the "stand alone" success. It was not that I was selfish, just I liked the idea of achieving individually. However, slowly, I am beginning to feel like though it is a different type of (very important) reward, driving and leading a successful team is much more rewarding in a business sense.

Recently, I felt like I reached a sort of compromise, in team sports and team business, being successful individually no longer mattered to me as much as it used to, I have become more focused on the team success. However, demonstrating my intellectual individuality and success has become more important than ever. I feel like this is an important part of me that I genuinely don't want to lose. Perhaps this is down to how I feel I can contribute to a teams success - I, like most people, still want to stand out within a team, for me this is by intellectual vanity, but ultimately I do want the team to be successful.

To conclude, the bottom line is this - loved up romantic comedies about ludicrous situations involving gender mind swapping can teach you a thing or two about yourself. Maybe this says more about my own disposition than I care to admit, but hell, it was a cracking movie. I couldn't escape thinking about work, but when the romance is that good, its okay to shed a tear.

Kindest,

Dante

*the film was called "its a boy girl thing", starring some people called Samaire Armstrong and Kevin Zegers. It has much better acting than Hugh Grant has ever managed. Check out its imdb entry: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482527/