I’m going on the assumption that I’m writing for four readers tops, so I’ll go ahead and charge the gate, feminism guns a-blazin’: Media portrayal of strength in femininity is a double-edged sword. (The button to immediately close this tab can be found on the upper left corner of your window.) A little prerequisite justification for those of you still with us, I could never accurately label the inarguable and significant presence of women on television as negative. Small screen casts are increasingly peppered with actresses filling roles notable for their diversity and depth, and we’re reaping the benefits of an ongoing transition, a departure from the arch of every comic subplot involving somebody’s wife forgetting to pay the guy that put up the wallpaper. Damn it, Laura.
Thus, likely hoping to avoid the millennial uproar that would inevitably follow unequal gender representation on screen, every major network has taken the precaution of scheduling a daily female power hour; you’ve got your Rizzoli and Isles, your Pretty Little Liars, your Hot in Cleveland. I’ll save you the airtime so you can watch that show where they follow around the people who give out parking tickets in Georgia instead (A). There’s a cookie cutter formula for writing your pick of Arrestrogen Developments (B). The storylines of female-driven programs nearly always require fulfillment of the same several character archetypes; mix, match, and become absurdly wealthy as the creator of Sects and the City (C).
The Olivia Pope, Scandal
She’s an impeccably dressed single woman, intently focused on her high profile career at the expense of her personal life. Yes, she’s got a ballin’ white coat, and yes it does almost make up for the fact that her romantic endeavors outside the nondescript FBI office-van inside which she works are in literal shambles (D). This is definitely not a damaging portrayal of women on television; powerful ladies on screen undermine the traditional understanding of weakness as feminine. The danger, however, creeps in when The Olivia loses her realistic complexity in favor of maintaining power. We watch as remaining wholly powerful entails avoiding compromise and sacrificing interpersonal relationships beyond staying on good terms with that white coat (E). Taking after powerful female characters could mean implicitly adopting a black and white perspective of the spheres of your life--you can be independent and successful or you can have a healthy marriage but are you kidding me Olivia, you cannot have both.
See: Olivia Benson (SVU), Claire Underwood (House of Cards), Selina Meyer (Veep)
The Brenda Johnson, The Closer
She may not have a Y-chromosome, but, let me tell you, she’s got a career and probably a faux-Texan accent. Like The Olivia, The Brenda is similarly invested in her work and demonstrates her power through a no-nonsense-style regard for her colleagues. She successfully secures the respect that her attitude demands, but at the sake of outward warmth. The key difference between the two working women can be found as their plots unfold over through the course of time. The Olivia remains generally inept at healthy interaction, while The Brenda ultimately reveals her true, nurturing nature. Like a pistachio or hazelnut, her coworkers eventually discover that the Brenda’s tough shell cracks under the pressure of a correctly-sized nutcracker (F). That nutcracker will almost definitely take the form of a cold case that involves a child. Beneath the surface level curtness is a damaged woman, vulnerable because of her youth spent in a neighborhood where a pack of wild dogs took over and successfully ran a Wendy’s. She’s got all the acceptable attributes of your standard woman, but laboriously buried so as to garner the respect of her usually-mostly-male colleagues. Subtly, The Brenda promulgates the idea that traditionally feminine characteristics must be suppressed in order to be respected in a masculine workplace, confirming hopelessly ingrained beliefs.
See: Jane Rizzoli (Rizzoli and Isles), Sue Sylvester (Glee), Carmela Soprano (The Sopranos)
The Blanche DeVereaux, The Golden Girls
Always a supporting character, The Blanche serves as the punchline of every relevant sexual innuendo a writing staff can pen, and she’s potentially the most hackneyed female trope in the run of modern television. The Blanche is gonna promise you the bachelorette party of a lifetime, and the stripper’s gonna end up dead. To be bitingly frank, televised female sexual liberation is an inherently positive thing, at least in terms of parity in behavioral expectations between genders. We’re all intensely familiar with the well-founded argument that the same sexual habits are lauded when exhibited by men and scolded when exhibited by women. Historically classic programs feature womanizers as institutions, while female co-stars spent 21 minutes a week hotly debating whether going up to make-out point (G) to neck (H) with the captain of the football team would be worth the ultimate reputational sacrifice. So in this sense, it’s not the worst thing I can think of to keep a female Fonz in a recurring cast (I). However, when The Blanche’s singular purpose as a character requires only a creative lexicon of insinuations, we regress into a territory that keeps female showrunners trapped inside a single dimension. Beyond her sexual proclivities, she’s got extremely limited depth; The Blanche is as damaging as the June Cleavers of television’s heyday, but at the spectrum’s opposite extreme.
See: Samantha Jones (Sex and the City), Roz Doyle (Frasier), Jessa Johansson (Girls)
The Phoebe Buffay, Friends
The Phoebe is a human embodiment of the most cliched stereotype to grace both television screen and jokes from that time in our lives when we didn’t have a firm grasp on what humor was, exactly. If I can step outside the sad and cynical potato sack in which I’m currently thrashing around for a moment, I’ll happily go on record as naming Friends one of the funniest shows of our time/of most times. God help me, because it’s unlikely that I’ll ever find a human man that I love as much as I love that show. But The Phoebe is a cornerstone of the bizarre cycle that finds media influencing national humor, which influences culture, which influences media; at some point, the dumb blonde trope weasled its way into that sequence and was quickly assimilated. The Phoebe lacks a certain degree of self-awareness, and I suppose ultimately fans the remaining embers of the essentially dead assumption of female intellectual inferiority. It’s difficult to gauge what sort of significance she wields in terms of real life social expectations. I’m absolutely not propositioning that all women on television are exclusively brain surgeons (J) but I guess it would hurt to consistently pair The Phoebe with, like, The Monica.
See: Brittany S. Pierce (Glee), Penny (Big Bang Theory), Jenna Maroney (30 Rock)
Watching heroines in media fall consistently into constrictive categories can be discouraging. We’re rarely granted a lady version of Jerry Seinfeld or Tony Soprano, a female character designed to emphasize human complexity, exude honest humor, acknowledge flaws, match power and warmth. But I think the answer lies with Leslie Knope.
The Leslie Knope, Parks and Rec
The Leslie is allowed true connection with others-- there’s no fear that, by acknowledging her desire for interpersonal support, she betrays a fatal weakness of dependence. She, like The Olivia, is wholly invested in her work and also probably owns a white coat, but is successful not because she wears a facade of harsh determinism. The relationships that her contemporaries resist ultimately elicit the respect that we watch others cultivate through emotional distance. We are allowed to see her fail, to watch her as she shakily navigates the personal and the professional, to literally watch her tumble inside a pit of dirt and ask to borrow some first date cargo pants. The Leslie is important because she does women a favor with her vulnerable reality and with her love of waffles.
See: Pam Halpert (The Office), Lorelai Gilmore (Gilmore Girls), Liz Lemon (30 Rock)
- It’s real, I saw it in the gym twice, and I liked it a lot.
- I’ll have you all know that I thought about that one for a long time, so, just...okay? EstroGeneral Hospital? Estrogen is definitely involved, non-negotiable.
- It’s the story of four Roman Catholic nuns who are sassy as hell, but pious as heaven
- I do not watch Scandal but I feel 100% certain that this is where Olivia Pope works. I did not fact check.
- It’s still ballin’, even if you’re lonely, Pope
- Metaphors are hard.
- Let that scene from the movie Zodiac be a warning to us all about make-out points.
- Another thing that I do not know but am too tentative to google.
- The worst thing I can think of is the time I was hit in the forehead with a meatball.
- See: EstroGeneral Hospital.
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