Joanna stares at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She looks for a smile, but cannot find it. She takes a few moments to reflect in the empty West End apartment before joining her two daughters, Kim and Amy, at the station wagon downstairs. While they wait for her husband, Walter, Joanna sees a man awkwardly carrying a mannequin down West 75th Street. She pulls out her camera to capture the moment. Walter joins them, the dog Fred in his arms, but not before complaining to Joanna about her cleanup job in the apartment—the signal to the movers with the truck, who follow them.
— Daddy, I just saw a man carrying a naked lady.
— Well, that's why we're moving to Stepford.
The family arrives at their new home in Stepford Village, Connecticut, and the movers begin moving in furniture. Their neighbor, Carol Van Sant, comes over, her makeup and hair immaculate, an apron on, and a casserole in hand. She hands it off to Walter. Walter watches in fascination as Carol saunters off. Joanna asks Walter why they moved — he gives every reason why it’s good for the kids and good for Joanna, propositioning her for sex. Later, while walking with Fred, Walter sees Carol’s husband, Ted.
She looks as good as she cooks, Ted.
The next day, Joanna sees the kids off to school. After some bored meandering around the house, she spots Carol outside trimming the hedges and brings her the casserole dish. Or rather, she starts to, until she sees Ted come out, grope Carol, and open her blouse before ushering her into the house for sex. That night, Walter tells Joanna about the Men’s Association, the premier club for whose-who in town… if you’re a man. It becomes clear that Walter moved them out here on his own interest, and this men’s club is something Walter has clearly already joined.
At the grocery store, Carol gets into a fender bender with Kit. Joanna and the family leave the grocery store. As the ambulance carries her off, Carol repeats the same things over and over. Also, Joanna notices that the ambulance isn’t heading toward the hospital.
No, I'm fine, it… this is all so silly. It's just my head. I… Oh, this is all so silly. It's… It's just my head.
What’s going on in the town of Stepford? I mean, I think you know. This movie is one of the most referenced pieces of media around. But that doesn’t change the experience.
Ira Levin, who wrote the novel on which the movie is based, has said in interviews that he did not intend to have a social critique in his book. If anything, he was jaded after a divorce. And yet, audiences of the book recognized the novel’s feminist undertones, including director Bryan Forbes. Forbes, not Goldman, wrote the final script of the film, but Goldman stayed on for the residuals. This film is Forbes’s take on the material, hammering home what the book was too indirect to state so adamantly.
— I like to watch women do little domestic chores.
— You came to the right town.
Though the Second Wave saw a mockery of feminism in this movie, the contemporary trad wife trend and the obsession with turning the current wave of AI into girlfriends and nonconsensual porn generators remind us that the battle for women’s equality hasn’t changed much since this movie came out 50 years ago. Just take the Equal Rights Amendment, which began circulating in Washington in 1971. It took until 2020 for Virginia to become the 38th state to ratify the ERA (the minimum required for the Amendment to become law), and as of 2026, it has still not been ratified as the 28th Amendment.
To make it more personal, my sister was speaking to a friend about sexual politics, and our uncle approached her to say, “Didn’t you know? The Bible states that a woman must give men sex whenever they want it.” Beyond openly admitting that he regularly rapes my aunt, he also reflects the “traditional family values” that continue to dominate Conservative talking points. He is one of millions of men who want a Stepford wife — a cooking, cleaning, and fucking machine designed for men’s pleasure.
Thank you to Eleanor Johnson and her book, Scream With Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism (1968-1980), for inspiring me to watch this film sooner rather than later. Many of my thoughts above are influenced by her and refer to points made in her book.