MovieChat Forums > The Special Relationship (2010) Discussion > 23! 'She's a child!'

23! 'She's a child!'

posted 14 years ago by IntelMagician
13 replies | jump to latest

Shut the hell up! Jesus God, she called Monica Lewinsky a child! Amazing what people think is a child. A full grown 23 yr old woman, who can live on their own, pays bills,taxes,etc and who works in the White House is a "child"! LOL! Stupid writing.

And it's not a "child" compared to him because once again she's a woman, not a child and both sexes when adults can date older if they want. Nothing wrong with it between CONSENTING ADULTS in terms of that. NOW interms of him being married...yeah different story. Not right ha.

[–] Hedgehopper30 14 years ago

Just watched this on HBO and said the same exact thing at that part. She calls a grown young woman(22-23 yrs old) a "child" with almost disgust. She said it like Clinton was dating a 13 yr old or something.. My teacher is 23. I'm going to the school tomorrow to complain a CHILD is teaching the class! Agree, the cheating was bad and wrong but it was two consenting grown adults, not a $#%@& child. Plus she's not a child compared to him.
P.S. Probably half the people associated with this movie are dating someone younger then them. Hehe:)

[–] Noir-82 14 years ago

It didn't bother me. Even for the most calculating and level headed women, It's totally probable that a woman would get impassioned and exaggerated when it comes to marital arguments; especially when the argument is about infidelity.

I know because men can inflame and exaggerate too depending on how charged up on an argument they find themselves in.

[–] TrentinaNE 14 years ago

Agreed. Look, I thought of myself as a woman at 18, but I had the gravitas to back that up. Lewinsky did not seem like a very mature 23-year-old; she came across as naive and childlike. I think the line was an exaggeration for effect -- but it WAS the way a lot of people felt about the situation, especially when you juxtapose the differences in power (POTUS v. intern).

[–] Hedgehopper30 14 years ago

Oh please! NO ONE even knew who this girl was or if she was "mature". Give me a break with that. It was a breaking story. She was an unknown intern. 23 years old is a woman not a freaking child. That line was so stupid. They made the line for her age and it was overdone and ridiculous. 23 yrs old a child? Next thing will be,"OMG she's 29 yrs old. Shes a child! Hahaha!

[–] 14 years ago

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[–] Hedgehopper30 14 years ago

Young enough to be a daughter is NOT a child. If someone is 70 yrs old and their GF is 39-40 you don't say shes a CHILD ecause the woman is young enough to be the 70 yr olds daughter. Ha cmon. A child is a child,not a grown woman in her 20's or 30's,etc. It was for dramatic purposes to make it look worse and it just came off so dumb. JMO.

[–] johnston.scot 14 years ago

Two responses:

1 - It's ordinary hyperbole. What she means is, "She's way too young for him, and for the situation."

Hyperbole is incredibly common in ordinary speech, and it's easy to come up with all sorts of examples, either different ("I could eat a horse") or similar ("he's a cradle robber," "stop being a baby").

2 - She is way too young. Twenty-three year olds are much less mature emotionally, and dramatically different in terms of life experience, than 50-year-olds, or even 30-year-olds. The idea that Bill Clinton, in particular, might happily take up with a 23-year-old intern (even if he weren't married) is kind of ridiculous.

[–] Gwasgray 14 years ago

Tony and Cherie were in their mid-40s, Clinton was in his 50s, when you're that age, 23 must seem very young. A 23 year-old has not been an adult for very long and it isn't really right that they be involved with someone 30 years older than them, is not very possible that the older man could be taking advantage of the young woman (using his superior knowledge and experience to manipulate her)?

[–] disillusioned_cipher 13 years ago

Spot on.

[–] starmarker 11 years ago

Just watched that movie last night and really enjoyed it. However, that "she's just a child" line really did seem to be a clunker. Objectively, it's just not true. 23 year olds are not children. But ... Keeping in mind that every line of a script is carefully worked out, I'm not sure what that line was trying to say. Perhaps it was supposed to reveal something about the character who says it, which I believe was Cherie Blair. She's a serious woman with a family and career of her own. Perhaps it's meant to point out that in her eyes a 23 year old intern is a child and certainly no replacement for a mature, intelligent partner like Hilary Clinton. Of course she's missing the whole point that it was about sex with Monica Lewinsky, not partnership.

[–] slw-01153 9 years ago

I think it's exaggeration meant to mark the 30 year age difference between Clinton and Lewinsky. She's not suggesting that Monica is literally a minor, just that she is a child in comparison to him. I have a friend who dated a 22-year-old when he was 30 and we teased him mercilessly with lines like "it's 3 o'clock man, do you need to pick your girlfriend up from school?" and "hey there's a new Pixar movie coming out, I bet your girlfriend will love that." Obviously we didn't mean she was literally eight years old, we meant she was too young for him. And that was with less than a 10 year age difference; you can imagine that a lot of people have a very visceral reaction to someone in his 50s dating someone who's barely out of college. I think that's what we were meant to get from the line: a visceral reaction of disgust.

[–] XxMusexX 11 years ago

Meanwhile fourteen year old boys are tried as adults and given the death penalty. While they don't kill them until they are 18 it's still disgusting. It troubles me how society, even some of my fellow feminists will infantilize women. She was a grown up and certainly NOT a child who was taken advantage of.

"I hate to say this, but this place is getting to me. I think I'm getting the Fear."

[–] Jes' Sayin' (5990) 3 years ago

The point was not to denigrate her, but Clinton, because there was such a big age difference.