As the current wisdom goes: Men are stubborn; women are flexible. “It’s the ‘Will you hold my purse?’ theory,” Feig explains. “A guy’s in a store with his wife or girlfriend and she asks him to hold her purse, it’s, like, Kryptonite or something. They have to hold it so that no one around them thinks it’s theirs. But if a guy says to his wife or girlfriend, ‘Can you hold my backpack?’ she’s like, ‘Sure.’ She doesn’t give a shit. I think Hollywood banks on that.”
- from the Village Voice article “Who Killed the Romantic Comedy?” in which director Paul Feig explains why a male “no” carries more weight than a female “yes” to Hollywood movie executives, and why the rom-com is on the decline.