Another day, another entry in EnAmCel.

C is for Cameron (Diaz, that is, not Cam’ron, who, though he’s done some important work on behalf of the apostrophe, isn’t quite EnAmCel-worthy yet)

The seminal image in Cameron Diaz’s ouevre is of her petrified shock of hair in There’s Something About Mary.

She takes Ben Stiller’s uncooperative jizzulation—which is the most literal possible manifestation of male sexual vulnerability and inadequacy—and takes its shame unto herself. He’s the one who can’t even master his own masturbation (a masturbation he engaged in, lest we forget, in the hopes of staving off premature ejaculation in the event that he got Diaz into bed later that night), but once she takes his vulnerability into her hair, it’s transubstantiated into her vulnerability. This is male fantasy at its purest. A hellaciously sexy (and rather tall) woman who not only isn’t going to make her (short short) man feel small but who’s willing to sacrifice her own dignity in order to alleviate his sexual and masculine anxiety.

This innocence and selflessness, laid over the ka-pow body, is Diaz’s secret weapon. It’s also been a severe limitation in her career. Grown-up women in grown-up relationships definitely support their men when they (the men, that is) try to work through their insecurities and anxieties, but they (the women) don’t wash them (the anxieties) away, and they certainly don’t take them upon themselves (why would they? They’ve got their own insecurities and anxieties to deal with). So Diaz plays well in adolescent fantasies full of adolescent-minded men—movies like There’s Something About Mary, Charlie’s Angels and Shrek—who want to be saved, sexed up and mothered by their women all at the same time. She becomes absurd, however, when we’re expected to believe that men who are at ease with themselves—like Jude Law’s character in The Holiday, or Thomas Jane’s character in The Sweetest Thing—would have any interest in having a meaningful relationship with her. She’s a really hot girl, perfectly suitable for a roll in the hay, but she’s still just a girl, not yet a woman.

Diaz, to her credit, has been more convincing in those movies where the focus was her vulnerability, where her girlishness wasn’t offered as an escape but rather presented as a trap. She wasn’t bad as the hooker with a heart of gold in Gangs of New York, and she was quite good as the broken-winged younger sister in In Her Shoes. There’s little evidence, however, that she’s interested in finding her way as a supporting actor, which is what she’d probably have to do if she wanted to delve further into her talent. Once you go $20 million/picture, it’s hard to go back.