Nicole Kidman - Stepford Wives

I think they did it for the movie. Matter of fact the trailer I saw made the ones before the new wife they all looked under the weather. So it was just part of the movie to do that. I wouldn't call they wanted to make the statement that all short hair is bad.

Granted, I'm not terribly familiar with the "Stepford Wives" story, but I think that the wives are turned into robots of some sort.

As for the hair, I don't think that it's necessarily an assertion of good vs. bad in terms of long and short. More simply, I think that it's a matter of what men want vs. what women prefer for themselves. Nicole's character might be more herself in short dark hair, but when she's transformed, she has long blond hair like her husband prefers (just like so many other husbands in Stepford, which I think makes the men look just as strangely homogenous as the women, seeing as they all have such similar preferences). And she has no say in the matter, seeing as she has been made submissive as well. Again, this is all based on my rather limited understanding.

The film is a remake. In the original, they were indeed robots.

In the trailer, Nicole Kidman's character is a career woman who makes her husband feel inferior because she's better than him at everything. Apparently, a lot of the Stepford Wives were that before they were replaced.

The book was published in 1972 at a time when the feminist movement was taking women out of the house. I don't know if the book was a stab at the feminist movement and male reaction to it or a satire of it. But it was very 1972. In 2004, are men really looking for women who don't think, are beautiful, and do housework? Perhaps this is still a male fantasy, but it doesn't seem as poignent. In 1972, there was a battle of the sexes going on. Now, there isn't.

Since Ms. Kidman doesn't have very short dark hair, the director and hairdresser made a consicous choice. Dark, short hair would signify the career woman who doesn't care to look attractive or about what her husband wants. She's an insenstive jerk before. But long blond hair is the sexy ideal.

I'm not arguing her initial haircut isn't butch and unstylish. It is. I just don't think they needed to go with short dark hair to emphasize that. When the movie comes out, we'll see.