Rom-Com Heroines Explained: Why Their Romantic (Yet Unrealistic) Stories Ruled The 90s

She’s smart, beautiful, just Hollywood enough to feel aspirational but also just regular enough to feel relatable: she’s the 90s rom-com heroine! Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts ruled the decade - from Sleepless in Seattle to Pretty Woman to You've Got Mail to My Best Friend's Wedding and beyond - but there were a whole host of iconic heroines that popped up during the rom-com boom of the 1990s. So today, let's unpack what made the 90s rom-com heroine special, where the archetype came from, and how they might have given us some pretty unrealistic expectations about life and love (and why we love them anyways!)

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CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
01:19 The birth of rom-com heroines (that paved the way for the 90s)
03:22 What made the 90s heroines so relatable
04:22 How Nora Ephron (& Meg Ryan) changed how people saw rom-coms
07:36 Julia Roberts' relatable yet aspirational heroines
10:07 What this era's rom-coms missed
12:37 Why 90s rom-com heroines continue to be beloved

The Take was created by Debra Minoff & Susannah McCullough
This video was produced & narrated by Jessica Babineaux, written by Cassondra Feltus, and edited by Daniel Wolff

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