Marvel Does Right By It's TV Women

I’ve long been waiting for a Black Widow movie along with most fans of the Marvel cinematic universe. After three Iron Man movies, two Captain America movies, and two Thor movies, I think it’s about time that fans get to enjoy a movie about their favorite lady Avenger, one Natasha Romanoff. But alas, it seems film executives are still caught in the trap of thinking that dude-bros will only go see movies about other dude-bros, leaving characters like Black Widow out in the rain, though Marvel hasn't completely nixed the idea. Until executives get past this, I’ve turned to a different medium for my fill of Marvel’s kick-ass women: the small screen.

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD premiered on September 24, 2013, aka my birthday. It was basically the best birthday gift ever. If you’ve never watched it, the premise is essentially that a super-secret team of spies working for the clandestine security organization SHIELD fly around on a plane and save the world on a regular basis. Aside from the excitement, Marvel references, and perfect mix of super-snappy comedy and high stakes drama, one my favorite parts of the show is the main cast, a cast that is an even split between men and women. For each male lead, there is an equally matched female lead. What’s more is that the women are equally as nuanced as the men and their stories are given the same amount of screen time. Melinda May is portrayed as an agent equally as skilled as Phil Coulson, Jemma Simmons is shown to be just as smart as fellow scientist Leo Fitz, and Skye is just calculating and cool under pressure as Agent Grant Ward.

 It might not seem like that big of deal to have an evenly matched set of characters, but when you consider that men still outnumber women on television in starring roles the feat becomes that much more impressive. It is also encouraging that the women’s stories are not typically thrust offstage to give more of the spotlight to the men. SHIELD has skillfully split it’s storytelling time between all of the characters almost equally and, though it could be argued that Phil Coulson is the main protagonist he is surrounded by characters with stories that are just as rich and important. Furthermore, SHIELD has shown that it isn’t afraid of putting women in the pilot’s seat, literally and figuratively. While Melinda May pilots a jet, Maria Hill and Victoria Hand fill some of SHIELD’s top ranks. With the likes of Joss and Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen as producers and writers, SHIELD is proving to be a beacon of hope for the future of Marvel’s female characters and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it’s first season.

After much speculation over the fate of Agents of SHIELD, today ABC announced that in addition to renewing the inaugural Marvel television series for a second season, it is picking up another Marvel production, this time a spin-off of Captain America about the Cap’s former love interest Agent Peggy Carter. Agent Carter is set to explore Peggy’s life as a woman in what is unquestionably a man’s world, the world of mid-20^th century spy work. Hopefully, the show will succeed and be another boon for Marvel’s women, perhaps even proving once and for all to Hollywood executives that Marvel fans are just as interested in the women of Marvel as they are in the men of Marvel, clearing the way for the Black Widow movie we've all been waiting for.

The TIME 100 and Some People TIME Forgot

Yesterday TIME published its famed “100 Most Influential People.” I love browsing this list, reading profiles of fascinating people written by other fascinating people, and every year look forward to it. I was thrilled to see some of my favorite feminist icons featured on this year’s list: Beyonce, Hillary Clinton, Malala Yousafzai. However, this year as I was reading some entries from the “Icons” section I got a sinking feeling that the list would not achieve gender parity this year. After finishing my perusal of the list, I went back and counted and my gut was right. This year only 41 of the world’s most influential people were women.

I can’t say I was shocked, but I’ll admit I was disappointed. The “100 Most Influential People” list is inherently subjective which gives the editors some leeway in who ends up on the list. If the editors wanted to achieve gender parity on the list, they would be absolutely within their rights to do so. I have to wonder why it isn’t a priority especially in 2014.

However, rather than wallow in my own disappointment I set out to fill in the gaps. I decided to pick out nine women to complete the list. I thought, at first, that this might be difficult given that TIME couldn’t come up with nine more women to add to the list and I found very quickly that I was right. It was difficult, but not for a lack of influential women, rather for a preponderance of them.

So many women seemed to deserve a place on this list. A few names immediately jumped to mind: Wendy Davis, Dilma Rousseff, Sheryl Sandberg, Elizabeth Warren. But even then I couldn’t stop naming amazing, fascinating, diverse, influential women. In fact, the longer I went on naming women, the easier it got to list off accomplished ladies. I ended up with a list of 19 individual women, one two-woman team, and one three-woman team, and I could have gone on if I let myself.

I stopped myself at a list that included these 24 women: Mindy Kaling, Wendy Davis, Shonda Rhimes, Elizabeth Warren, Tina Fey, Dilma Rousseff, Drew Gilpin Faust, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, Sheryl Sandberg, Amy Purdy, Michelle Obama, Laverne Cox, Jennifer Lawrence, Lupita N’yongo, Piper Kerman, Amy Poehler, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Robin Roberts, Lorde, Katy Perry, and Geena Davis.

Each of these women is, in her own way, redefining something about the world we live in. They are leaving indelible marks on our culture and our world and it’s a little bit ludicrous that none of them was recognized on TIME’s list, if you ask me. I hope in future years that TIME’s editors will consider making gender parity a must for the “100 Most Influential People.” I believe almost any relatively informed person could list 50 incredibly influential women so it shouldn’t be that much of a challenge to TIME’s editors.

Here’s to this year’s “100 Most Influential People” and to the many women on the list, the many women who should be on that list, and the many women who will one day be on that list.  

It's Four Days Later and I'm Still Mad: Thoughts on the HIMYM Finale

Everyone has something to say about “How I Met Your Mother” and the finale to its nine-year run that occurred on Monday night and I’m no exception. So here goes nothing.

I’ll start by saying I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with HIMYM. It was hilariously funny and I can’t pretend it wasn’t, but many of the jokes were at the expense of women. Both the premise of the show (Ted telling his kids about his serial dating) and the characters (I’m lookin’ at you Barney) could be creepy.  However, the characters were interesting and compelling and this was a comedy that wasn’t afraid to tackle real, non-comic topics like the death of Marshall’s dad or Robin’s inability to have kids. Even though I often felt guilty about it, I kept tuning in for years and for that loyalty I felt I deserved some satisfaction and reward from the finale, but I was left viscerally disappointed.

For nine seasons, I invested in these characters and was able to watch significant character development unfold. But one hour threw almost all of that character development away. Barney went back to being a creepy womanizer, Ted hadn’t really let go of Robin, and Lily and Marshall were still almost exactly the same as they were nine years ago except for job and family size. I felt cheated and it seems to me the characters were cheated, too.

Additionally, the plot concerning Barney and Robin led to so much disappointment, at least for me. After watching a whole season take place over the weekend of their wedding, I was even more invested in their relationship than I had been at the start of season 9. Throughout the season every problem I was worried about in their relationship was carefully handled by the writers which is why I felt a little bit confused when they were divorced within three years. It was adding insult to injury when Barney fell for his baby daughter via a stranger because it seemed that the one thing that could truly change Barney’s nature was the one thing Robin couldn’t give him, a child.

Yet, the disappointment over Barney and Robin paled in comparison to the disappointment over Ted and Tracy, the eponymous Mother. Tracy, who became so beloved in so few episodes, was reduced to a mere plot device. She gave Ted the kids Robin never could and by dying she allowed “the nice guy” to finally get the girl, except it was the wrong girl. The final five minutes made the whole story not one of Ted meeting the mother but of never getting over Robin. If I had been one of Ted’s kids I would have been ticked off with my dad. Even without being Ted’s kid I’m still ticked off! Tracy was a compelling female character who shouldn’t have been short changed the way she was by this finale.

I understand that the desire to have Ted and Robin end up together stemmed from a long ago determined original plan, but I think that’s the problem. A famous saying goes “What screws us up most in life is the picture in our head of how it’s supposed to be.” As it turns out, it’s what screwed up HIMYM the most, too. Having a plan is great, but at some point the characters might make that plan irrelevant. That’s what I believe Ted, Robin, Barney, Lily, and Marshall did. The original plan no longer fit these characters. The best show would remain true to the characters. Unfortunately, this show remained true to the plan instead.

While that might sound like a lot of problems for me to have with the HIMYM finale, there’s one I haven’t mentioned yet that deserves some attention. The pineapple. I was promised an answer to all of my lingering questions and I didn’t get this one. What was the story of the pineapple?

Representations of Rape: Scandal, Downton Abbey, and House of Cards

Trigger warning: Rape, sexual assault

This television season has been a notable one for many reasons, but one that has stood out is the high profile sexual assault stories featured on several of the most popular shows. To see such stories on mainstream television can be both comforting and disturbing. While it is good to know that telling survivors’ stories is becoming more of a priority, the way some shows do so can be damaging. It is not easy to portray sexual assault on TV. It comes with many challenges and often goes wrong. Three shows to tackle sexual assault story lines recently stand out for their varying methods: Scandal, Downton Abbey, and House of Cards. Each of these shows portrayed sexual assault in a different way, sometimes the wrong way. I’d like to examine what each show did right and what each show could have done better in the hope that media will improve even more in its representations of rape in media.

Let’s start with Scandal. The show made headlines in November with the episode “Everything’s Coming Up Mellie,” centering around the oft maligned first lady, Mellie Grant. The episode, largely one of flashbacks, was clearly meant to humanize the fiercely strong FLOTUS. Unfortunately, the way it did that was with a rape perpetrated 15 years ago by her father-in-law. To many loyal viewers it felt like a cheap plot device meant to explain some of Mellie’s current day personality traits and behaviors and it begs the question “Why do we need to humanize strong female characters like Mellie?”  That said, Scandal did handle some elements of the story well. Many of these elements were highly accurate representations of what sexual assault is really like. For example, the crime was never reported or prosecuted which is very often the case in real life cases. In addition, the perpetrator was not a stranger hiding in the bushes. It was someone Mellie knew, someone she was close to. Most survivors are not raped by strangers but by friends, family members, or acquaintances. Repeating this crucial information is so important to changing the way rape is perceived and stopping rape culture.

One thing Scandal did do right that our next show didn’t was make Mellie’s rape Mellie’s story. Downton Abbey failed to do this. When Anna was raped by a visiting valet on the show, the story quickly became about her husband, Mr. Bates, instead of about Anna, the survivor. Instead of seeking support from him, Anna was forced to try to hide her experience for fear that he would seek revenge from the perpetrator. Anna is forced to deal with what her husband might do instead of dealing with what happened to her and that makes it even harder for her to cope with a situation that is already incredibly difficult to deal with. Even when Anna was forced to sit at the dinner table with her attacker, a troubling scene to watch, the focus was not on Anna but on her husband and her rapist. Anna’s story was not her own and that is upsetting.  If rape is to be portrayed on television, it must be portrayed as the survivor’s story.  Again, Downton Abbey did manage to get a few things right. Just like Mellie’s case, Anna’s case goes unreported and unprosecuted and again the perpetrator is an acquaintance, not a stranger. But even those correct points do not excuse the way the show handled Anna’s story.

The final show to be discussed, House of Cards, arguably handled sexual assault the best of the three shows discussed in this piece. The Netflix hit did not show the sexual assault on screen as the other two shows did, but it did make the storyline just as powerful, if not more powerful. This story is one of Claire Underwood, the second lady of the United States, coming forth about the sexual assault that happened to her years ago at the hands of her then-boyfriend, a future high-ranking military officer. Claire is first required to tell her husband what happened to her when he must award a star to the perpetrator as vice president. After her husband, Frank, reacts with a violent outburst, smashing a lamp, Claire reclaims the storyline when she confronts him about his behavior later at night and bravely recounts what happened and her own anger at the situation, an anger she was forced to deal with lest it consume her, but where Frank smashes an object with that anger, Claire directs it at making a difference years after the assault. After is Claire is forced to come forward with her story on national news, an experience most of us could never imagine, she spearheads an effort to reform the military justice system with the help of the first lady and another survivor of sexual assault at the hands of the same rapist. Her efforts mirror the current struggle to pass similar reforms, the Military Justice Improvement Act, in the Senate, making Claire’s story very timely and relevant. While Claire’s effort ultimately falls short and Claire is forced to trade her goal of true reform for a lesser alternative because of her husband’s career, the story is elegantly told and the audience is able to see how it affects Claire and how she deals with it. She is the model of strength and resilience and she is allowed to claim her own story in a way that Mellie and Anna were not.

Again in Claire’s story, as in Mellie’s and Anna’s, the attacker is not a stranger and the attack goes unprosecuted. But in addition to these well-done elements, the three women’s stories shared one other important distinction and that is that they were never blamed. The only character on any of the shows who even begins to blame a survivor is Anna’s attacker and another characters shuts him down so quickly and efficiently it is an admirable statement on victim-blaming. While it may seem like a given, the lack of victim-blaming in these shows is crucial. If we are ever to get past rape culture and appropriately tell and honor the stories of rape survivors on television, victim-blaming simple cannot happen and when a character does do it it must be met with the revulsion and fire it was met with on Downton Abbey. Only once we get past a culture of victim-blaming, will we be able to truly end rape culture. Thankfully, all three of the discussed shows help us to do that.

This is the first time I've addressed representations of sexual assault on television on my blog and I wanted to do it in a way that was sensitive to survivors. If, for some reason, this post fails to achieve that level of sensitivity, let me know and I will try to be more sensitive in any future writing.

A Short Note on Media Coverage and Sexualization of Female Athletes

It’s no secret to anyone that women don’t receive a lot of sports coverage most of the year. With the focus firmly on football, men’s basketball, and baseball there isn’t much room for female athletes in mainstream media coverage. Every two years the Olympics provide a welcome respite from this, but not without a cost. During the summer and winter Olympics our televisions are filled with images of hundreds of athletes from all over the world battling it out in a wide variety of sports and, for once, we get approximately equal coverage of the ladies and the men. The difference in the coverage lies in the types of sports covered, specifically those most covered in prime-time.

When I watch prime-time coverage of men’s sports during the Olympics it varies between almost all sports represented, but when women are allowed coverage it tends to be in sports that offer a much more sexualized view of women’s bodies like gymnastic, figure skating, and beach volleyball. Let me be clear: I love all three of those sports and athletes in all Olympic sports are astoundingly talented, but the unbalanced coverage is hard to miss. In addition to watching these sports where the phrase “the fewer the clothes, the better” seems to hold true, I’d like to see a little bit more of women’s biathlon or women’s archery during the 8 to 10 pm hours.

It’s simple really. All I want is equal representation in Olympic prime-time coverage. I don’t think that that is so difficult and I anticipate it will happen slowly over the next few decades whether we realize it or not because that is the nature of the Olympics. We love to see our athletes, all of them, compete and news outlets will get that message. You won’t lose me, at least, if you show a little less beach volleyball and a little more table tennis.

Hillary Clinton Is Not a Planet: The Dangers of Objectifying America's Most Powerful Woman

Disclaimer: This isn't about television. I just felt the need to address it.

I keep a March 2011 issue of Newsweek on my desk. It’s devoted almost entirely to “150 Women Who Shake the World” and features countless stories about what women around the globe are doing to improve the lives of women and children everywhere. Among those women is Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State. A photo of her, in all the dignity and authority of the office she held, is featured on the cover bearing the title “Hillary’s War: How she’s shattering glass ceilings everywhere.” It’s hardly a remarkable cover, but for me it’s a remarkable magazine issue. I still keep it for two reasons. One is for the inspiration I can find by flipping through the stories of all 150 amazing women, but the more important reason is to remind me that, like former Secretary Clinton and these women, I am the subject of my own story.

In recent weeks, a spate of interesting magazine covers has made headlines. If you have been paying a lot of attention to the news, you probably know that I’m referring to TIME’s portrayal of Hillary Clinton as apantsuit-clad leg crushing a tiny man with a high heel and New York Times Magazine’s depiction of the same woman as a planet. Of course, these representations of one of the world’s most powerful women were offensive on a few levels. Whether you love Clinton or hate her, you have to acknowledge that this trend is disturbing. For me the issue boils down to the fact that in each instance Secretary Clinton was portrayed as an object rather than a person. This is objectification of women at its worst. Objectification of women has long been documented as detrimental to women’s self-perception and confidence. Furthermore, the objectification of women in political roles leads to the perception that they are more incompetent and less human, a phenomenon documented by Nathan Heflick and Jamie Goldenberg in their case study of Sarah Palin in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The case of Hillary Clinton’s most recent magazine cover representations serves to point out that this objectification is not always sexual as it often was in the case of Palin. Objectification is so dangerous because it tells us that women are not subjects, or actors, but objects to be acted upon. By repeatedly portraying Hillary Clinton as an object rather than a subject, the media is making her less threatening and formidable as a candidate and less human.

The real problem with magazine covers like TIME’s and the New York Times Magazine’s is not simply that it is offensive to Hillary Clinton to be portrayed as a planet, but that it is dangerous to all women to see each other portrayed as things instead of people. I hope as the 2016 presidential race closes in on us that we will see fewer magazines like those and more like that of my treasured copy of Newsweek where women are just women, not things. 

Notes: 

The article about the objectification of Sarah Palin can be found using this citation: 

Heflick, Nathan A, and Jamie L. Goldenberg. "Objectifying Sarah Palin: Evidence That Objectification Causes Women to Be Perceived As Less Competent and Less Fully Human." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 45.3 (2009): 598-601. Print.

I Love You, Leslie Knope

Parks and Rec returns tonight and I could not be more elated. I am absolutely thrilled that Parks and Rec returns from a relatively long winter hiatus because I absolutely and completely love Leslie Knope. I know am not the first person to say this and I certainly won’t be the last. That’s because Leslie Knope is awesome.

Leslie is exactly the kind of heroine we need more of on our screens. She is determined, she is funny, she is fearless, and she is flawed. Leslie represents a female protagonist who is neither broken beyond repair nor too perfect to be attainable. She is strong in her convictions and still a little silly. Her unbelievable dedication is matched by a propensity to overreact. It is exactly this balance that makes her real and believable. Even in her eccentricities there is something intrinsically relatable about her. Between that and the general hilarity of the show it is nearly impossible not to tune in each week to see what our favorite Pawneean is up to.

Leslie is one of the best examples of a feminist TV has to offer right now. She is proud of her feminist roots and unafraid to call people out on their sexist behavior. She talks the talk and walks the walk. From starting the Pawnee Goddesses, a scout like organization, when girls were shut out from the Pawnee Rangers to becoming a trash collector for a day to prove that women are just as capable as men, Leslie is a warrior for equality (which she has stated would be her stripper name if she were a stripper). Furthermore, Leslie’s belief in equality does not just crop up once a season like it might in other shows; rather, it represents a major theme of the show. Parks and Rec has not just blessed us with a female protagonist but has gifted us with one who proudly proclaims and lives her feminist beliefs and is not demonized for it.

Leslie is without a doubt my favorite TV character, but she is not the only strong point Parks and Rec has to offer. In addition to Leslie, the show offers us one of the most diverse casts on television in race, ethnicity, and body type and, for the most part, does not make cheap jokes about these aspects of identity. Instead it often uses comedy as a vehicle to call people out on everyday mishandlings of identity. A great example is when Leslie repeatedly asks Tom, her Indian-American coworker, when his answer of South Carolina doesn’t satisfy her curiosity. Tom’s eventual answer of “my mother’s uterus” serves to highlight the absurd behavior of bombarding non-white people with the question “Where are you really from?” The show also demonstrates a strength in its portrayal of female friendships. Instead of focusing mostly on relationships between men and women the emphasis on Parks is usually given to the relationships among the women, particularly the relationships between Ann and Leslie and Ann and April which makes it even more of shame that Rashida Jones, the actress who plays Leslie’s best friend Ann, is leaving this season. Needless to say, a great majority of the episodes of this show pass the Bechdel test.

Overall, Parks and Rec is the best that comedy has to offer. While it tends to be rather ridiculous, it still manages to be meaningful. For as many moments as I have laughed over the course of the show, I have also been pleased to see various societal flaws, particularly regarding women in power, called out. I’m excited to visit Pawnee again starting tonight and if you’re looking for a hilarious half hour with a killer female protagonist, then I hope you’ll join me.