A classic movie line: "...and you have a baby... in a bar" speaks to young mothers.

“… and you have a baby… in a bar”

NOTE From BobLee… I know he’s NOT but I swear the back-home guy in this movie is Matthew McConaughey despite Blondie and Kid swearing he’s not…

It IS a Rom-Com classic on the level of You’ve Got Mail and Sleepless In Seattle… IMO.

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15 Years Later, ‘Sweet Home Alabama’s’ Baby In A Bar Is A Lifestyle, Not A Laugh Line

I cannot tell you how many young-mom friends of mine have referenced this scene as we talk about our adventures juggling life, friends, work, and family.
Mary Katharine Ham

The Instagram account of my imaginary bestie Reese Witherspoon informed me this week is the 15th anniversary of the release of the movie “Sweet Home Alabama.”

In this classic rom-com romp, Southern belle turned Manhattanite fashionista Melanie Carmichael (Witherspoon) has it all. She’s just debuted a buzzy fashion line burdened with early-2000s trends to much acclaim. She has a fabulous gay mentor, a cosmopolitan girlfriend with a British accent, and is about to get engaged to a dashing political scion of New York City played by Patrick Dempsey.

There’s just one small problem. She’s still technically married to her childhood sweetheart, Jake (Josh Lucas), and the city mouse must go back to the country in her black turtlenecks and Jimmy Choos to get a divorce. Along the way, we find culture clashes, hilarity, and and maybe, just maybe, a third-act plot twist, an unrealistically magnanimous jilted lover, and the true meaning of love. Spoiler alert.

The film is rated a pretty dismal 38 percent by Rotten Tomatoes, but I revisited it with a glass of wine, as my chromosomes would have me do, and Witherspoon’s charm is as usual more than enough to make the film worth watching. But this 2002 film has a lesson that will resound forever, and it has nothing to do with Jake and Melanie, or even Dempsey’s enduring hotness. It is this. Live your life like Lurlynn.

Lurlynn, played by Melanie Lynskey, is a friend of Witherspoon’s character’s from high school. We are introduced to her as Melanie struts into the local honky tonk wearing her own designer duds, and Lurlynn greets her effusively.

“Oh my God! Look at you, all fancy! You look like you just stepped out of a magazine.”

Melanie replies, “Look at you! You have a baby…in a bar.”

That’s the famous line, but I had forgotten the one after it, which is a veritable life philosophy for motherhood. Lurlynn, who is nonchalantly toting an infant during the preceding conversation, smiles unabashed and declares, “Hell, I got three more at home! This one’s still on the tit, so I can cart him anywhere.”

Yes, girl, yes. When they are still on the tit, you can indeed cart them anywhere. And you should!