Today’s top female characters on television have restored Emily Heist Moss’ faith in being a 21st century woman.
Between the crotch-shot sharing ladies of Jersey Shore, the squabbling botox bunch of Real Housewives, the konstantly konniving Kardashians, Big Ang, Honey Boo Boo, dance moms and toddlers twirling in tiaras, you might come to the conclusion that it is a lousy time to be a lady on television. And you would almost be right. If a historian of the future were to turn to low-brow TV to understand women of the 21st century, she would conclude that we are a bunch of cat-fighting, screeching, preening, sobbing, mascara-dripping messes.
As a woman in my 20s, I want this epoch in American female history to be characterized not by our worst constituents, but by our best. Luckily, in addition to the J-Wooows and teen moms, the historical record will also include the denizens of Sunday night’s Emmy Awards—an interesting, complex, wide range of characters that draw a collective portrait of 21st century women of which I’m proud to be a part.
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We all like to see ourselves and our peers validated by popular culture; it’s part of what makes us feel connected to the larger tapestry of humanity. It’s why the Dove Real Beauty campaign resonates with many women, why having a black family in the White House is so powerful, why LGBTQ communities celebrate when Anderson Cooper publicly revealed himself to be a member of the tribe. Seeing people like us immortalized on screen is one of the ways we know that our stories matter.
We might wish that our perceptions were drawn from more prestigious sources, but few vehicles can match the nationwide coverage of mainstream television. For that reason, and that reason alone, it matters when two women on Grey’s Anatomy get married, or when 24 casts a black President, or when Kurt’s dad on Glee defends his gay son. With their broad appeal, these shows create space for progress and understanding by shoving the boundaries of our expectations back inch by inch.
But what expectations of women did television create for us? What space was carved out? In the past, the classic small-screen woman was a sit-com mom. She was harried, nagging, and constantly scolding the children and husband who waltzed through her domain (usually the kitchen) with dirty feet. She put her family above all else, and her identity was folded snuggly, subsumed even, into her roles as wife and mother. Do we ever hear her discuss anything other than the well-being of her kids and spouse? Unlikely. There’s nothing wrong with this portrait of American mom; millions of women probably identify with her daily struggles, but it is a narrow slice of womanhood that casts an outsized shadow.
What about the rest of us? What would I have to see on my screen to make me feel validated and recognized by the media establishment? I want female friendships that don’t center on helping each other win the affections of men. I want platonic friendships across genders. I want conversation about work, about our families, about the state of the world. I want tough decisions to be made, and I want us to acknowledge how tough they were. I want complexity. I want nuance. As Margaret Lyons at New York Magazine puts it, I want television “where the female characters aren’t completely othered at every moment; where their motivations make as much sense as male characters’; where they’re given the same opportunities to be perfect and imperfect, powerful and disempowered, as right, wrong, scared, and brave as their male counterparts.” It’s not about perfection, or pedestalization, it’s about humanity, and dammit, being human is hard sometimes.
This Emmy season was all about rewarding female characters who are not easily bucketed into ingénue, soccer mom, or bitchy boss lady. Amy Poehler stars in Parks and Recreation as Leslie Knope, a 37-year-old unmarried small-town politician with big aspirations. Husband hunting is never her goal, and the words “biological clock” are never mentioned. She is big-hearted, smart, and well-liked, but not immune to professional insecurity and personal turmoil. On 30 Rock, Tina Fey uses her character Liz Lemon, a television producer in her early 40s, to explore and poke fun at privilege in all its manifestations. She is neurotic and grating, but eminently relatable. Television newcomer Lena Dunham plays Hannah Horvath on HBO’s Girls (which she also created), a half-hour dramedy about exactly how fantastic and ridiculous and conflicted being female in your 20s can be. For Alicia Florrick, played by Julianna Margulies on The Good Wife, the decisions between career, motherhood, romance, and friendship are never easy. Everything has a cost attached, and there are never obvious answers.
What about the rest of the bunch? The group of nominees is rounded out by a CIA agent with problems of her own, a 1960s copywriter pushing against the glass ceiling, an abrasive patent lawyer making a fresh start, a 60-something partner at a Chicago law firm, and the conflicted wife of a drug lord. These are not pat, cute parts, with dopey husbands and canned laugh tracks. They are meaty roles, even the comedic ones, full of conflict, both internal and external. It’s not that there have never been roles of substance for women before (think Maude), it’s just that this year was positively chock full of them.
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Sometimes I worry about future historians. Anyone who has ever paged through personal letters of their historical idols in a quiet library carrel, or spent hours squinting at mimeographed newspapers knows what a joy-filled, frustrating, semi-satisfying experience it is to build a portrait of the past through words of its inhabitants. What will historians of the future do? Comb through email and gchat archives? Dig into text message logs, foursquare check-ins, retweets, and Facebook likes? What will they think of us when they see that we spend our days obsessively looking at a 4-inch piece of glass and plastic which we only put down to look at a 14-inch piece of glass and plastic? And what will they think of the women?
Hopefully, when paging through the primary sources of my era, future historians will find glimpses of the true experience—varied as it is—of the 21st century female. Somewhere between the pages of crash diets and botched plastic surgery they will come across The Good Wife, or 30 Rock, or Parks and Recreation. They will watch Mad Men and Girls and they will come to the same conclusion I came to while watching the Emmy’s: Being a 21st century woman is a pretty sweet gig.
Emily Heist Moss is a New Englander in love with Chicago, where she works in a tech start-up. She blogs every day about gender, media, politics and sex at Rosie Says, and has written for Jezebel, The Frisky, The Huffington Post and The Good Men Project. Find her on Facebook and Twitter.
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