“I’m tired of being amazing. I don’t want to be amazing anymore.”
The single sentence becomes the crux of the show and of modern motherhood. Jenny Kaminski (Dakota Fanning), a hardworking publishing executive, meets Marissa when they’re hiding out in the bathroom at a school event. The two forge a friendship over twinning in the same dress and dealing with the same dilemma. They are tired of the platitudes their husbands serve them, of doing it all at home and at work, and being told they can have it all if they really work for it.
In All Her Fault, Dakota Fanning plays Jenny Kaminski, a married wife and mother carrying the load of a single mom. She takes care of her young son and her husband, a man who doesn’t clean up after himself in the kitchen, and texts her to ask where their son’s water bottle is.
When I finally started watching All Her Fault, weeks after hearing the well-earned buzz, I was both excited and not at all surprised to see Dakota Fanning playing Jenny. Something about the casting made perfect sense to me — but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I just knew that Jenny Kaminski = Ray from Uptown Girls.
After sitting with my thoughts some more, I realized that it’s not just Ray; Dakota Fanning’s entire extensive resume has clearly laid the groundwork to lead her straight to the role of Jenny Kamiski. It feels like the writing was on the wall in a very unique and specific way.
Jenny Kaminski is very much who I imagine all of Dakota Fanning’s characters from childhood could have grown up to be: an “amazing” woman doing it all.
Who better to play a wife and mother who is ‘doing it all’ than an actress who grew up playing children who also had to do it all? Who better to play the new friend of a mother whose son was kidnapped than a woman who has herself played a kidnapped child?
Dakota Fanning has played multiple little girls who either ran away or were kidnapped at some point in a film*. Both Lily Owens from The Secret Lives of Bees and Lucy from I Am Sam (Dakota Fanning’s SAG award-winning performance) run away. Abigail Jennings (Trapped) and Lupita “Pita” Ramos (Man on Fire) are both kidnapping victims. Ray also runs away to Coney Island in Uptown Girls, in one of the most pivotal (and memeified) scenes in cinematic history. How surreal to now play a mother supporting another mother with a missing child.
Some of the initial details and musings that sparked my early connection to Ray, and then to more of Dakota’s other incredible roles, include…
* I knew Ray would make a wonderful mother if she chose to have children. Girls who have complicated relationships with their mothers sometimes pass down all the trauma, but sometimes they do all the work necessary to break the cycle and become much healthier moms. I think Ray did the latter.
* I knew Ray would have a fabulous career and be such a ballbusting badass. You can really see Jenny’s inner child (aka the precocious spitfire that is Ray) come out when she’s working.
* Jenny Kaminski is both a member and an outsider. She lives in this Monterey-type town (very Big Little Lies except it’s Chicago), but she’s also on the outskirts of it, too; she’s not playing their games, and she sees through the bullshit. Ray’s world in Uptown Girls is one of deep privilege, but she also saw it for what it was (as much as a child can)
* Jenny Kaminski knows the lifesaving power of female friendship.
Many of Dakota Fanning’s younger characters were saved by strong, loyal, unconventional women in the form of Molly Gunn (RIP Brittany Murphy), The Boatwright Sisters, and Jennifer Hudson (The Secret Life of Bees).
These women were the Ms. Honey’s to these characters, Matilda’s; women who stepped in and redirected the course of little girls’ lives with their compassion, care, and strength.
When Jenny Kaminski’s husband warns her not to get involved because it looks like their family could be linked to the crime (The Kaminskis ’ nanny goes missing the same day that Milo does), she immediately ignores his “advice” and becomes Marissa Irvine’s biggest supporter and true friend.
It’s also worth noting that some of Dakota Fanning’s characters did grow up with great male role models like Sam from I Am Sam, and Denzel Washington from Man on Fire (which I haven’t seen, but I’m going to assume he was a positive influence on her life because he’s Denzel Washington).
* It’s unfortunately believable that a grown-up Ray would stay with an incompetent man (Jenny Kaminski’s husband) who is about as useful as furniture. Ray’s father died when she was young, and I can see her wanting a “perfect” two-parent household. A grown-up Ray might honestly feel ‘lucky’ to have a husband like Richie Kaminski, who is “trying” to be present.
I know it’s tempting (and far more empowering) to think of Ray having higher standards than that. It’s a far more redeeming arc to imagine mature little girls as women who take no shit.
Some of my friends looked at the husbands in All Her Fault and thought, ‘Isn’t it unrealistic that those women would stay with men who have so few redeeming qualities?’
You might be thinking, if Dakota Fanning’s characters had all of these amazing influences, how did she grow up to be Jenny Kaminski, this overworked woman married to a man who isn’t showing any interest in her life or actively contributing to raising their child?
Children who are praised for their maturity and competence often become adults who think that carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders is normal.
I would know.
Too many people know what it’s like to feel lucky when they get scraps. Many of us even convince ourselves we’re full when we’ve actually been starving our entire lives for something we’ve rarely, or never, tasted.
When I was around 6, my family’s flight was delayed for 12 hours on the way home from spring break in the Caribbean. After finally landing at JFK around 3 AM, we waited in baggage claim for what felt like forever. When I spotted my father’s worn beige leather duffel, I tried to get my parents’ attention. I don’t remember how hard I tried or how loud I was. I have no idea why they didn’t hear me or notice the bag themselves. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be in the airport any longer than I had to be. I made the swift decision that I would grab the bag myself.
That caught my parents’ attention.
They were so shocked and proud of me. My strength. My observation skills. My proactivity. It’s a story we tell all the time to this day, a story in which I am the hero.
Another time, months or maybe even years later, we were at the garage, and our car wouldn’t start. We went outside to call the car manufacturer people. I heard someone on the other line ask for our car’s license plate number. After my parents fumbled around for a minute, considered going back in the garage to check the car, and tried to remember if they had the number saved somewhere, I simply blurted out the number.
I couldn’t believe they didn’t know the license plate number we looked at every single day. Part of me honestly thought they did know it and were testing me. Again, I was praised for my swift thinking, my observation skills, and my memory.
Time after time, the messaging kicked in: I’m so mature, I’m so responsible, I’m great at remembering things, people are so impressed by how put together I am, and how well I can take care of things. I’ll keep doing that.
And I did. I kept doing that. I took on more than I should have had to handle, made it look easy, and kept collecting praise.
“The character that I play epitomizes the ‘modern woman, somebody who’s trying to be everything to everyone: a good mom, a good wife, a career woman, a good friend—struggling to do it all and questioning if she can. I think, regardless of whether a woman is married or has children, we all feel the push and pull to be everything to everyone at all times. There are moments when you just want to scream, ‘I’m just a person. There’s only so much I can do.’”
- Dakota Fanning
I’ve been quietly relating to mothers who carry an inordinate mental load since I was a child. I remember watching (then reading) I Don’t Know How She Does It in high school and feeling such a strong connection to this quintessential woman who was being praised for doing it all.
Can’t anyone see how tired she is? Can’t anyone see that she needs help?
The thing I’ve now realized at 30, still childless, still relating to married working moms who are forced to function as single parents —
Women often don’t actually need help. We want it. We deserve it. But we are used to not having it. And therefore we don’t need it — because we have trained ourselves not to.
What kind of training, you ask? Asking for help, never getting it, and finding a way to keep all the balls in the air at the expense of ourselves and our own needs.
Women who look like they don’t need help = Women who don’t get to have their own needs met.
Sometimes life wakes us up in big ways, forcing us to see the cracks in our systems and mental loads. The Irvine Family experiences this kind of jolting, dramatic wake-up when their son is taken.
The Kaminski Family experiences a slower, more subtle wake-up.
Jenny (Dakota Fanning) could have technically gone on living the way she was. There were cracks, but those cracks were more nuanced and stitched into the fabric of her life. You could make the argument that her husband is “not as bad” as Marissa’s — and in some ways, you’d be right.
But is “not as bad” good enough?
Even the most capable woman will break if she carries everything alone.”
- Linda Ayoola, I Didn’t Expect to Be Personally Attacked by a TV Show!
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, or a spoiler, that the title ‘All Her Fault’ refers to the ways that men blame women for not carrying the weight of the world perfectly. It’s like blaming someone for dropping one of a million things, instead of realizing that their load is much heavier than it should be.
In therapy recently, I said something to the effect of I’m carrying everything really well, and I don’t want to stop to put it down and talk about it. If I just keep carrying it, I don’t have to think about how heavy it is before I pick it up again.
In addition to building the strength needed to carry such a heavy load, we also have to find the strength to bottle up our growing resentment for people who both praise and criticize us — like the men of All Her Fault. The push and pull of being called amazing and then criticized in the same breath is a special kind of whiplash.
I, for one, get really defensive when people who have never walked in my shoes criticize me. That’s everyone for the record. Even if our lives are similar, we’ve never truly walked in anyone else’s shoes. I have really done my best to remove words and phrases like ‘should’ and ‘well, if I were her…’ from my vocabulary, to stop myself from judging people who I know are trying their best. We could all stand to do that far more often.
I’m not going to patronize you by tying up an essay about the complexity of the mental load by tying it up with a neat bow. I don’t have a neat bow. I’m out of string, and I’m too exhausted to go buy more.
So instead of that bow, I’ll leave you with a few podcasts below about carrying the mental load of motherhood and being called a “superhero”, featuring the wisdom of Amanda Doyle (Glennon Doyle’s brilliant sister)
Oh, and one more thing?
You are amazing. Not amazing the way that people mean it when they praise everything you’re doing.
Amazing as in, ‘You are so amazing and you have so much to offer this world beyond taking care of other people.’
Amazing as in, ‘You are doing such an amazing job surviving this crazy world and being a human, and you should go take a nap if you can.’
Amazing as in, ‘You’re not amazing despite the dirty dishes, you’re amazing because of them.’
Amazing, as in, “Drop the measuring stick of everyone else’s expectations and go pour some of that ‘amazing’ energy back into you. You deserve it.’
Okay, maybe that was a little bit of a tidy bow. What can I say? I have a lot of practice keeping things tidy, and it’s a hard habit to break.
PS You know who else probably relates to carrying the mental load of an overworked, stretched-thin, do-it-all, make-it-look-easy mother? Nick Jonas. Specifically, the version of himself that he plays in A Very Jonas Christmas Movie.
At one point, he screams, “YOU CAN’T GET MAD AT ME FOR MAKING ALL THE DECISIONS WHEN I ALWAYS MAKE ALL THE DECISIONS,” and wow, did I feel personally attacked.
Let your family take care of themselves for a few hours and go watch that movie, it was a time.
PPS If a man uses that PS as an excuse to say that men are not getting enough credit for the mental loads they carry, and somehow twists this into an example of the ‘male loneliness epidemic,’ I swear to God.
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