A few of my favorite shows, with awesome female-led casts, have all taken on some interesting issues of late, some with more concerning outcomes than others. I love seeing these story lines, even when they're problematic, because they're great fodder for lunchtime conversations with my feminist coworkers. Which probably means they're great fodder for other people's conversations and we need to be having more conversations about these things.
I generally find Jess' character on New Girl to be obnoxiously one-dimensional, but in the October 7th episode, "Micro," she took on her male friends for objectifying women and judging them based on their looks. She then shows herself to be a hypocrite by immediately agreeing to date a disarmingly handsome man she meets at the bar who turns out to be a horrible human being (with a micro-penis no less). Funny, irreverent, feminist.
In contrast, I tend to feel that The Mindy Project, with smart and genuinely funny Mindy Kaling at the helm, is a great portrayal of complex womanhood. She's a badass OB/GYN and also a serial dater and rom-com watcher. Except in "I Slipped," airing right after the aforementioned New Girl episode, which begins with Mindy's boyfriend "accidentally" engaging in anal sex with her, despite her protestations ("That doesn't go there Danny!"). We later learn he did it on purpose because he wanted to try it, but I guess was embarrassed to ask her about it. Yea friends, that's called rape. If you want to try something with a partner and you're not sure they'd like it or want it, or even if you feel reasonably sure they would, you have to ASK. And they have to AGREE. This is called consent and without it, sex is rape.
To make things worse, Mindy feels badly about not being sexually adventurous so she uses alcohol and drugs to loosen herself up so she can engage in the act. So much about this is wrong. And yet it's all just portrayed as hilarious hi-jinks.
Then on the October 8th episode of Nashville, "I Can't Get Over You To Save My Life," we watch Juliette go to an abortion clinic. Presumably, her pregnancy is the result of the time she cheated on her boyfriend and had unprotected sex with her sleazy former boss. Then, thanks to mandatory biased counseling, she - gasp! - changes her mind. This counseling, often full of scientifically inaccurate information, is intended to shame women and discourage them from choosing abortion. This story line reinforces the false idea that these restrictions are based on what is best for women, rather than an unabashed attempt to impose a certain set of beliefs on doctors and patients. This idea, that abortion restrictions support women's health and safety rather than risk it, undergirds a variety of increasingly harsh laws, including those in Texas that recently resulted in the closure of an additional 13 clinics in the state. When, in fact, thanks to a new report, we now know that states with the highest number of abortion restrictions have the worst health outcomes for women in children.
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