I Am Not An Easy Man (2018) tells the story of Damien (Vincent Elbaz), an app maker, who is used to treating women like his inferiors: he disrespects his coworkers by not believing in their projects and creates an oppressing atmosphere in the work area. Besides this, he catcalls girls on the streets and even makes women feel extremely uncomfortable when talking to them.
The plot opens when Damien is walking with his friend and bumps his head in a street post. Then, he wakes up in an alternate reality where gender “roles” are inverted and men are being oppressed by women.
At first he is extremely confused, but starts to slowly notice the new difficult reality he now has to go through: his ideas are not well received at work anymore, he watches his male friend struggle to take care of his three children without the constant help of his wife, he discovers that to be socially accepted he has to shave almost every inch of his body, and also starts to deal with women catcalling and assaulting him at the streets of Paris, where the story takes place in.
Those struggles become so unpleasant to him that he even searches for help at a “masculinity” movement, which fights for men rights and demands equality. However, it is possible to see throughout the movie that he is not looking for equality, what he wants the most is for things to go back to “normal”.
Image Source: Medium
The movie then proceeds with its storyline, and during the movie, when the “roles” are inverted, it is possible to notice how sexist our society really is. Sometimes it is funny to see men doing some things that they don’t often do, but other times it is really eye opening in some aspects.
We are so used with women being sexualized, oppressed and minimized, that we don’t even notice some things anymore. For example, in the new alternate universe there are no lingerie commercials sexualizing the female bodies, women don’t need to wear sexy pieces of clothing (that sometimes are very uncomfortable) just to please men, women hold the higher positions in their jobs and don’t really participate actively in the process of raising their children.
Image Source: Marie Claire France
I Am Not An Easy Man creates a great critic to our current sexist world by portraying a “woman’s world”. It is threatening to see the hard reality we live in. When the gender expectations are inverted and men started going through what us girls go through every single day, we notice how much we struggle and suffer just for being women.