Funny Face Stereotypes

Funny Face (1957) is the story of a young bookseller, Jo Stockton (Audrey Hepburn), whose life is forever changed when the prominent fashion photographer, Dick Avery (Fred Avery) offers her a modeling contract in Paris. Funny Face was produced during the late fifties, when the mold for the Hollywood film included the proliferation dominant American ideologies, such as consumerism and a patriarchal control. This is exemplified by Jo’s transformation from an independent bookseller, obsessed with empathicalism, the philosophical study of empathy, and resistant to fashion, to the face of a new modeling campaign and the recipient of Dick’s love. As a result, the running theme throughout Funny Face can be that women can truly achieve happiness by entering into the idealized heterosexual romance and by finding success in a consumerist outlet. Therefore, Funny Face is a prime example of how dominant American ideologies of the fifties, such as consumerism and patriarchal norms, were encoded into the

This is exemplified in the many cases that Jo runs away throughout the movie. Each of Jo’s flights were for a variety of reasons, including: trying to get away from the women from Quality trying to make her over, from her first photo shoot so she could go to a popular café in Paris, in hopes of seeing Flostre, and to get away from Dick during the photo shoot when she was wearing the wedding dress as a result of her growing feelings for Dick. After each flight, it was Dick who went to find her and reassure her to return to her responsibilities. What these scenes are showing is a common trend in Hollywood during the fifties that women are characteristically unpredictable, and it is the responsibility of men to be the rationalizing factor in the lives of