From Gen-X to Gen-Y: a journey in film

In search of  a credible female protagonist from Reality Bites to Frances Ha

Clockwise from top-left: Stills from Reality Bites (1994),
 Kicking and Screaming (1995),
Frances Ha (2012) and Damsels in Distress (2011).

And Man Swooned

I've been reading a lot of Jane Austen lately, and the notion of young heroines using their beguiling manners to make a "conquest" which in those days simply meant a young, eligible bachelor falling madly and deeply, head over heels in love has been around since the Victorian era. Proust makes use of the term as well.

The "marriage plot" made popular by Ms Austin's novels was something that the women's movement was supposed to have retired long ago (hat tip to Jeffrey Eugenides). That the whole purpose of a woman's existence was to marry well was supplanted by feminism. Unfortunately, it's not the women who seem hooked on that notion in today's world, but the men.