Have Television Representations Of Women Improved Since Mary Tyler Moore Became A Working-Girl Icon In The 70's?

what shows are there today of single working women?

and aren't there like a dozen dramas (SVUs, CSI thingers, etc., with female leads? Patricia Arquette and Jennifer Love Hewitt, right?

teri hatcher on desperate housewives
the redhead from melrose place on desperate housewives? (is she working on the show now?)
calamity jane, et. al on deadwood
the gilmore mom maybe
is that show w/ the cute redhead and andy dick and eric roberts still on? very mtm
candice bergen, the girl from happy gilmore, parker posey on boston legal
that new julia-louis dreyfus thing still on?
kate on lost?
there's probably one on er right?

gilmore and desperate housewives (and the julia louis-dreyfus and cute redhead ones if still on the air) strike me as only ones that could be said to be 'about' those characters

ruling out procedurals is sorta gaming the table

Women get a better gig on the second-rate procedurals - Close To Home and all of those.

what about grass? (i have never seen)

also, certainly, the wives were the star on big love.

best/most three-dimensional character on Grey's Anatomy - Dr. Bailey

-- scott seward (skotro...), August 6th, 2006. (scott seward)

http://www.nostalgiacentral.com/images_tv/policewoman_672.JPG

also, crazy(like a fox) first lady seducing nixonian prex on 24 last season as a delay tactic and then wearing a wire to get him to confess and bringing him down - classic! (not the best example of "working woman" granted, but awesome nonetheless)

Of course, there's another way that representations of women could improve, and that would be, for instance, a more positive representation of any and all things feminine, including more positive representations of sissy, feminine men in the media. How's that project doing?

yeah, i get it. it's as old as the hills in sitcom land. honeymooners/ilovelucy/ad nauseum. and i would have taken raymond as a better example. still, her comment is weird. sorta like saying: no, things have gotten worse, except on these dozens of shows that gazillions of people watch! you know?

i don't mean to be glib about it… but do you really want to sit through a show show featuring an indecisive, mincing, sissy male character making weak choices and girlin' it up? and even if you do, how much of the rest of the (american) viewing audience does?

are those really (really?) the qualities in a man that you would characerize as feminine? curses for making me take a side with momus, but you've fallen in to his trap. i suspect he used the term sissy ironically, but uh, you didn't.

Jack is back! (will&gracefanzunite)

Also, I was being slightly disingenous in my use of terms... overstatement to prove a point.

i don't see this. unless working hard is a masculine quality. i think non-sexist on t.v. can just mean showing people working and having a life and not being simply the "wife" or "girlfriend" or vehicle for T&A. and i do see that on t.v. not always, but its there more than it used to be. i think.

i like how on Medium, Patricia Arquette's husband plays the traditional "wife" role. He is always reacting to what she says and does. "what's wrong honey, another bad dream(he has to say this every show, poor guy)". "another bad day at the murder scene, dear?" he's good at it too. and he is always left with the kids when she has to rush off to a serial killer somewhere.

I've always wondered why a lot of viewers (often speciously) ascribe dramatic action by female characters to a sterotypically masculine model of being. Hence the 'most female characters are really male' statement? I don't buy it -- it's dangerously close to the 'male authors can't write female voices right... but they can write serial killers, aliens, and rapists' line of reasoning, which I find profoundly upsetting.

discussed somewhere else here recently, but Ripley in Aliens is a good example of an exception to the man played by a woman thing.

yeah, sure. on the dramas anyway. hargitay's character on Law & Order comes to mind. complex, emotional, empathetic, and strong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/arts/television/06domi.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1154955618-qUPuq3De0nu2hParYhPOYg

http://www.oddcouple.info/pictures/oc1.jpg

Interesting. Female characters have to live up to higher standards? Bitch editor exhibiting her own sexism jumping to the conclusion that the queen of the king of queens is an old-fashioned submissive lady... Are we quicker to jump to negative conclusions about women, to find their faults, instead of finding their strengths?

Beth, being a housewife can feel like being a deadbeat - but it's really hard work! Planning dinner and driving is the least of it. What about the endless laundry loads? When I think deadbeat, I don't think cleaning/laundry. Besides that being engaged and there for your kids is extremely exhausting.

There's also the perennial problem of looks: average-looking and downright ugly men still command leading roles and get the girls without comment being passed; leading female characters must be stunningly attractive, slim and well-groomed at all times. I watched some episodes of Boston Legal the other day and it's extraordinary how all the high-powered female lawyers are barely more than girls - young, single, ambitious and available, no messy families in the background - while the men are, erm, William Shatner.

This is the thing that pisses me off the most. My favourite refrain when watching telly is "you know, if he was a woman they wouldn't let him on telly looking like that", to be said about everyone from William Shatner (although I love William Shatner) to Nigel Lawson.

(there are also several good female characters on The West Wing, not all of whom are devastatingly attractive)

I have only seen the first series of 24.

er, x-post somewhere along the line

(despite crazy uncle otto, i mean momus, there is good stuff here. cheers! everyone.)

Also, apparently Geena Davis sponsors some research group that looks at the media's attitude to women, and it starts young. They measured the male-to-female character ratio in the top-grossing children's movies of the last ten years, and it's something like three to one. They even measured the ratio of males to females in crowd scenes and found it stacked against women. Which I thought was quite interesting.

Also, the only really non-attractive woman I can think of on The West Wing is Nancy McNally (unless you count Mrs. Lanningham, but she falls into the "old geezer" category, which obviously takes her out of the running (not that it would take Paul Newman out of the running...)). But even then, the least attractive men on the West Wing are WAYYYY less attractive than the least attractive women.

Oh, I've just re-read the original post and realised we're meant to be talking about sit-com characters who are working women. Though we're past that now, and I think we've established that the co-founder of Bitch magazine is a bit of a fool.

So, for sitcom portrayals of harrassed, working, non-simpering, intelligent mothers, I give you Lois from Malcolm in the Middle.

(xpost, yeah, I was thinking Nancy McNally, Debbie Fiderer. Controversially, I might even include CJ, because although Allison Janney has what I think to be a beautiful sort of elegance about her, she isn't conventionally pretty)

Maybe a better example would be Victoria Wood? Is Dinnerladies the answer to whatever the question is?

Additionally, I wonder if Bitch Mag. thought to account for demographics in popularity. Sitcoms are the same old target that they have been for years (are their depictions perfect? No. Are they better than they were 10-20 years ago? Yes.), but I would argue that shows like "Laguna Beach" (which are popular with kids) are pretty regressive.

(going on whether yer average punter in the street would rate them highly based on a mugshot - I could have a crush on most of them, really, based on character, but on looks alone...)

i think she is pretty too! and i thought french & saunders was funny. i was just using her as an example of a big woman who was a central character on a sitcom. they are uncommon here. (and they are usually black woman - often used as comic relief - or they are conchata ferrell. who i love. now she is on two and a half men with charlie sheen. her one glorious shining moment was the one and only time that she was the lead in a movie. *Heartland* with rip torn in 1979. nobody saw it. blount, i think, mentioned that sitcom with andy dick and eric roberts and that woman whose name i can't remember. she was a big girl. it wasn't very good though. and it didn't last long. but it did stand out and she was the star of it.) what really made rosanne revolutionary though was that she was a big woman (who looked like a lot of her audience. thus, a normal woman.) who got to have a sex-life. this was pretty major. the only recent example in the u.s. of plus-size women as somewhat major characters in a GOOD show that i can think of would be the gilmore girls. three characters even! although two of them are played for laughs pretty consistently.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

.

.
.
.

The series finale was the worst. Girls work for girls! Donna has been a major player in a two-term Presidency, one near-winner Presidential primary campaign and a Presidential campaign, but she gets stuck with the First Lady. WTF? Oh, and Jimmy Smits' Congressional Aide (Rana? Ranna? the lesbian) doesn't even get a policy job, she's now MRS. LANDINGHAM

.

.
.

.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

The Bitch magazine woman? Yes, her name was Andi. The only character she seems to like on television is the one played by Mary Lynn Rajskub on 24. Except she can't watch 24 because it makes her too tense.

I thought it was kinda cool that the two founders of Bitch were both interns at Sassy. I don't know why I have never read Bitch. I'll buy anything. Is it better than Bust?

anyway, have we discussed crossing jordan? it seems to be only about 1/4 procedural. (ok, maybe a half)

also howabout lucky louie, where the doting harried wife also makes much more money?

I hate The Closer. All the annoying camerawork of Steven Bochco, all the boring of the Inspector Lynley Mysteries.

MTM was the best, she'd get tired after a hard day at the office just like a real woman.

i am not a woman. though i am womanly and have womanly curves. honey, i have legs that go on forever!

is this a revivalism

I dunno, he likes his legs it seems!

i don't understand, was Mary Tyler Moore not supposed to be a good representation of a working woman? i think she's swell

of course, i can't be bothered to read an intro post that long so i'm not really informed on the gist. guess i just wanted to say that i don't see much wrong with MTM or her awesome show =P

surmounter, read the post

best theme song ever

MTM is guesting on that sitcom w/ Betty White tonight

Maybe it will be like that St. Elsewhere episode where a psych patient kept addressing guest star Betty White as "Sue Ann."

Do you think 30Rock is subliminally retrograde? I feel like there's something about the way it affirms Baldwin's traditional masculine power even if it does so with a wink. And much of the humor is about Lemon's underlying anxiety at her lack of a relationship or kids. OTOH I guess Baldwin's relationships with a congresswoman and a maid are equally fraught.

all my fave wed. shows are new tonight. dunno what bitch magazine would think of cougar town and modern family and the middle.

so sad that one of my fave t.v. nights is blighted by the horrible Better With You. HORRIBLE.

and its sad that one of my fave big ladies of teevee from the gilmore girls is on such a bad sitcom. mike & molly. it could have been good. but that big guy love interest is so horrible. the whole show should be about swoosie kurtz.

and my fave Parenthood RULES for women. great characters on there.