Girls

   Andrea Press speaks about the history of television in her article “Gender and Family in Television's Golden Age and Beyond”. She states that “the ethnic and diverse representations of women early in television's history were replaced by a plethora of white, middle class families showcasing very simple problems- the happy people with happy problems” (141).

   While Lena Dunham's Girls does not depict a white middle class family that showcases very simple problems, it does depict a close group of white middle class girls living in New York City. Their “white girl problems” are made fun of in a Saturday Night Live parody commercial. This parody commercial mimics a season 3 promotion. The narration states “Girls returns with all new problems”. Immediately after there is a shot of the four girls walking, the character dressed like Shoshanna states in a concerned manner: “Today an old man on the subway told me to shut up. I mean omfg, I don't think i talk too much. I mean you guys would tell me if i talked too much. I mean I don't think i do right?”. The ridiculousness of Shoshanna's “problem” is furthered when the narrator announces that there will be “an all new girl, from Albania”. Tina Fey, dressed in traditional Albanian clothing, is then shown. Her first line is “I have roof over head, for this i thank God”. Her gratitude for a roof over her head makes the other girls' problems truly seem petty. Later in the parody, the actress playing Marnie complains “my ex-boyfriend is an internet millionaire”. Blerta, the Albanian woman, replies “my ex-boyfriend, is buried in shallow grave. On windy days the dirt covering him blows away and you can see skull." The juxtaposition between the Girls characters “problems” with Blerta's problems allows for a playful satire.

   I love Girls. The show dives into serious problems including abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, self esteem, adultery, and sexual identity. The show also covers simpler problems. It is interesting to look at Press' statement and see how problems in various shows get interpreted. Perhaps its the comedic air of shows like Girls, Modern Family and New Girl that make their problems seem less valid. 

30 Rock and Sex and the City

   The Sex and the City women, famous for their fancy brunches, Manolo Blahniks, and Hamptons trips seem to greatly differ from 30 Rock's Liz Lemon who "shotguns" pizza and loves Star Wars. After reading Andrea Press's article “Gender and Family in Television's Golden Age and Beyond” and Diane Negra's article "Quality Postfeminism?" it seems as though the women of Sex and the City and Liz Lemon aren't so different. 

   30 Rock and Sex and the City feature single career women in their mid 30s living in New York City. These characters do not follow the domestic, wallflower stereotype seen in the Golden Age of television. It is interesting that all of these strong female characters live in New York City. As Negra states, “New York itself serves as an explanatory framework for unusually assertive female behavior”. I agree with Negra because we rarely see the Liz Lemons, Samantha Jones, Carrie Bradshaws, Miranda Hobbes or Charlotte Yorks in suburban America. Their “outlier” behavior is justified through their city environment.

As Press states:

“Postfeminism... stressed the need for women to achieve equality with men in the workplace, the home and the bedroom. Television's representations of women throughout the 1980s and 1990s focused on women making “choices” usually between work and family. The “choice” theme is also limited to women who actually have such choices to make- mostly upper-middle class, educated, white and attractive women.”

The postfeminism that Press speaks about can be found in 30 Rock and Sex And The City. Liz Lemon, of 30 Rock, always battles with achieving workplace equality. As the head writer of The Girlie Show, her writing staff which is mostly male, always tries to belittle her. Additionally, the “choice” theme is apparent in Sex And The City. Miranda Hobbes is a successful lawyer and single mother. Her financial status allows her to not have to make the “choice” between full time mother or full time lawyer. She is able to balance both due to her ability to pay for a nanny. Charlotte York, another character on Sex and the City, makes a different kind of “choice”. After marrying a wealthy doctor, Charlotte makes the choice to stop working. Like Press states, the “choice” theme is found within upper middle class, educated, white and attractive women.

   Liz Lemon, Miranda Hobbes and Samantha Jones all beat to their own drum. They break societal norms and are not married by 28 and mothers by their early 30s. It is wonderful that contemporary culture allows for such characters, but it is also interesting that they are all white, educated, upper middle class New York City residents. 

Femininity and Sex in the City

I can’t recite every single line from Sex and the City like many of my Carrie-obsessed friends; however, I have caught a few episodes over the years. Before reading Angela McRobbie’s article, I found the show generally very feminist and progressive. Its whole premise is about four single women having, well, sex in the city. Each character has had several lovers over the years, and they are able to engage in these on-and-off again relationships without obscene amounts of judgment or criticism. The character of Samantha in particular engages in sexual relationships as if she were a man – tossing them aside when she is done with them.  

As McRobbie points out, the show is seen by some as championing post-feminism. While these women can be perceived as unbound from certain gender stereotypes such as the stay-at-home mom and the caring wife, they are certainly not detached from their femininity. The consumerist culture dominates the show, functioning as a “televisual magazine and show window.” The characters are obsessed with clothes, shoes and accessories, embracing the characters’ female-ness rather than repressing it. This idea of consumerism gives off the message that successful, liberal woman can still enjoy the aspects of femininity while not regressing back to old and outdated ideas of what a female’s role should be.

However, what I found most interesting about McRobbie’s article is that while Sex and the City has been praised by feminists (for many of the reasons above and more), the program still has many regressive characteristics. While the characters are very independent and liberal, their minds are still always male dominated. Carrie is especially a great example of this. She’s always after Mr. Big and even in the pilot episode where she “has sex like a man” all she really wants, in the end, is to find love and be swept off her feet.  As McRobbie states, the show is filled with “a tidal wave of invidious insurgent patriarchalism which is hidden beneath the celebrations of female freedom.” Carrie is constantly seeking the approval of men and this, in my opinion, negates many of the feminist qualities of the female leads. While they have taken great strides in both feminist and post-feminist ideas, they have yet to completely break through the barrier of patriarchy and male submission.

Girl Power

  Growing up in the late 90s and early 2000s, I remember hearing and seeing the phrase “girl power” and never thinking of its meaning beyond the fact that girls were more fun and that boys had cooties. Reading Angela McRobbie's article “Young Women and Consumer Culture An Intervention”, really made me reflect on the marketing and the consumption of “girl power”. As Robbie states: "Commercial values now occupy a critical place in the formation of the categories of youthful femininity... Companies draw on the language of 'Girl Power' as though to bestow on their products a sense of dynamism, modernity, and innovation” (p. 2 and 3). McRobbie's idea of consumable goods having the “girl power” message to bestow dynamism, modernity and innovation can be seen in key 1990s girl culture.

    Lisa Frank stationary was the must have brand of school supplies for an elementary school aged girl in the late 1990s. This brand of stationary used bright purples, pinks and blues and had images of butterflies, rainbows, unicorns and anything else deemed “girly”. Some of these folders and pencils had peace signs and aliens in hippie garb, which created a psychedelic mood. Lisa Frank also had “girl power” backpacks. Perhaps these “girl power” themed backpacks were designed in order to create a sense of modernity within the 1960s inspired artwork.


                               

   The Spice Girls were very important to most young girls in the late nineties and early 2000s. In their 1996 song “Wannabe”, the Spice Girls advocate for “girl power”. They believe that female friendships should come before any boy. These lyrics include “If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends, Make it last forever, friendship never ends”. The Spice Girls' stance that girls come before boys signals to women to stick together and emulate “girl power”. The Spice Girls continued to spread the “Girl Power” message in their book “Girl Power!”. Perhaps it is my 1990s bias, but I disagree slightly with McRobbie, and view that the Spice Girls were innovative. The Spice Girls' music and personas were definitely innovative and created an impact on the young girls on the late 1990s. Perhaps their “Girl Power” message wasn't modern, but it was presented to a group of women to whom it was modern and innovative. A six year old does not understand feminism, but she does understand putting her female friendships first.

                                                     

   While we do not know the true intentions of the Spice Girls and Lisa Frank producers, it is true that both of these aspects of 1990s girl culture were consumable goods.

  

** It is interesting that eleven years later, another all female pop group released a “Girl Power” song. The Cheetah Girls, a Disney Channel group, released their song “Girl Power” in 2007. This song would have reached a younger generation that was not familiar with Spice Girls. It seems as though the “Girl Power” message is here to stay. 

'Narrow Casting' and the Need for More Diversity

Pamela Chan

CTCS 412 Blog

As Andrea Press mentions in her article “Gender and Family in Television’s Golden Age and Beyond,” images of women, work, and family on the small screen have changed significantly throughout the past several decades. In the fifties, we were introduced to the classic “Leave It To Beaver” type of family—with the white picket fence and everything that came with it. Press then discusses the slow emergence of stronger, more rebellious women like Lucille Ball and Gracie Allen, who although continued their roles is the domestic spheres, constantly attempted to escape beyond the confines of their home.

Postfeminist television then opened up a whole new set of possibilities for the representations of women, with shows like L.A. Law and The Cosby Show featuring women making “choices” between work and family. More recently, there have been favorites such as Ally McBeal and Sex and the City, which as Diane Negra puts it in “Quality Postfeminism?”, generate “complex portrayals of (mostly) single, sexually active working women, sketching in rich detail characters who would have merely been femmes fatales in another era.”

Obviously, television has definitely come a long way, and its depictions of gender and of the family continue to influence American culture in indescribable ways. These days, current television, according to Press, “presents a third wave-influenced feminism that picks up where postfeminism left off, introducing important representations more varied in race, sexuality, and the choices women are seen to make between work and family” (p. 139).

            What’s ironic, however, is that although representations of social class, sexuality, and race have become more diversified, there still seems to be a lot of “narrow casting” in television of the postnetwork era. Shows like The L Word or Weeds may be playing to audience groups that are open to lesbianism or drug use, but like the “golden age of family television,” they still have “a white, middle-class bias” and “[err] on the side of portraying conventionally beautiful actress” (Press p. 147).

For example, The L Word, as Press argues, “displays young lesbian women as though they were heterosexual glamour girls” who all possess a kind of beauty that belong to a certain social class. Weeds, in addition, could be given brownie points for its matter-of-fact portrayal of drug dealing in white suburban middle-class America—but it still “retains the norm of focusing on thin, conventionally beautiful women”—i.e. Mary Louse Parker. 

            In the article, Press goes on to mention another example in Lynette Scavo from Desperate Housewives—whose portrayal of an on-again, off-again working mother “contrasts markedly with families of television’s golden age.” Yet in many ways, she is still visually portrayed as someone who remains “conventional and straightjacketed, impervious to decades of feminist critique” (p. 147). This also makes me think about the brief discussion we had in last Monday’s class—about certain people’s criticisms towards Orange Is The New Black and how the storyline seems too devoted to telling Piper Chapman’s journey from upper-class New York socialite to wide-eyed prison inmate.

In short, Press’ article makes an interesting point—television has undoubtedly been able to open up in terms of offering more diverse images of women, work, and family. Shows like The L Word are pivotal in the struggle for gay, lesbian, and minority rights—and its presence on prime time cable television is already a huge step in itself.

Social consciousness about the rights of gender and minority groups, says Press, may have “fundamentally changed in the United States” – but it still has a very long ways to go. Though prime television has become more racially and sexually diversified, that ‘diversity’ still remains limited for women as “thin, young, and conventionally beautiful images [continue to] predominate” (p.148). It seems that even in this day and age, we, as a society, still “remain decidedly ambivalent about feminism for women” (p. 148). Now that’s something to think about. 

How Social Feminism May "Force Independence"

The definition of feminism has continued to evole especially with the rise of social media in recent years. Social feminism can be seen in TV programs and magazines easily and the message they tend to give to women is: be independent and live your life!

But what is the definition of independence? According to dictionary, it is freedom from control, support, or the like, of others. There can be many different ways to live life 'independently.' However, today's social feminism that we see everyday portrays independence as "invidious insurgent patriarchalism which is hidden beneath the celebrations of female freedom" (McRobbie 11). Women who are shown as an independent character is usually someone who has a sufficient job, lives in a big city like New York, is sexually appealing, and pursuits free life style.
Because we have been exposed to these images for a while, many women have come to think that only by meeting those standards one can really become a "cool independent women." If you are not competent enough or daring enough, then automatically you do not meet that "independent women" standards.

Is this independence that social feminism is forming true independence?
It would be interesting to see how social feminism keeps on evolving in the future.

Why showing homophobia in television is important in getting rid of homophobia in society

Homophobia is often compared to racism and sexism because they are all deeply embedded in our culture, according to Walters. Homophobia, like racism and sexism, will take both time and patience until people will be able to see it eradicated from society altogether. Homosexuality television and film has evolved over the years with respect to how society has begun to accept homosexuality more and more. Even showing gay people on television in the 1950’s was radical, and now it is becoming more common to see gay people on TV in normal settings.

A large part of the evolving attitude towards gay people in both television and real life can be attributed to accurate homophobic depictions in television. According to Walters’ article, “by letting homophobic behavior off the hook, homophobia thrives, particularly under the surface of polite behavior,” and television is only presenting “a very small and skewed part of the puzzle” if it does not truthfully depict homophobia. In other words, television needs to address homophobia in the same way that it advocates for gay rights. If television showed gay people but left out the struggles that they have to face regarding homophobia, then this would be an unrealistic representation of what life is like for gay people, therefore taking a step in the opposite direction in the fight for gay rights. Also with homophobia present, the viewer will probably tend to sympathize with the gay character who has to overcome this hardship.

In the episode we watched in which Ellen comes out to her parents, her parents were not accepting at all. This made the viewer feel bad for Ellen and hope that her mom and dad could realize that her daughter was still the same, and continue to treat her the same way. By the end of the episode, her parents were more accepting, which put the viewer at ease. Had her parents been accepting from the start, it would have been unrealistic and the viewer wouldn't have felt compelled to root for Ellen throughout the episode.