Mary-Louise Parker – Bitch Flicks

“I’m Not Bad, I’m Just Drawn That Way”: The Exceptionally Beautiful Anti-Heroine

And if you’re anything like me, every reader of this site wants the same thing: to see more portrayals of women on film, televisions, and beyond that reflect their complexities, strengths and weakness alike. We want a greater range of body types, a greater representation of lifestyle choices, a broader world of occupations and skill sets and backstories and destinies.

This guest post by Jessica Carbone appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” This expression is meant to remind those who hear it not to conflate a beautiful face with a beautiful soul. However, when it comes to starring roles for women on television, the most important tool an actress can bring to the table is traditional, indisputable beauty. Why is this so valuable? Because from a storyteller’s perspective, it’s the perfect narrative loophole—if your main character is physically gorgeous, no matter what horrendous moral or criminal violations she might commit, viewers are still going to be hungry to see her on screen. Some newer anti-heroines deliberately break this mold (see Hannah Horvath on Girls), and we should be happy about that—whether she’s the hero or the villain, a female character can be much more than eye candy. But a beautiful actress unlocks some very interesting plotlines in the modern television writer’s rooms, and with the rise of the antiheroine, a woman on television can now get away with murder—literally and figuratively. But to do that, she can’t just be smart, funny, and fierce—she’s also got to be HOT.

just a few of the pretty TV heroines who escaped criminal punishment for their murderous deeds over the last decade. From left to right, Blake Lively as Serena van der Woodsen, Gossip Girl; Evangeline Lilly as Kate Austen on Lost; Tatiana Maslany as Sarah Manning from Orphan Black — Just a few of the pretty TV heroines who escaped criminal punishment for their murderous deeds over the last decade. From left to right, Blake Lively as Serena van der Woodsen, *Gossip Girl*; Evangeline Lilly as Kate Austen on *Lost*; Tatiana Maslany as Sarah Manning from *Orphan Black*

A pretty girl on television has never been an oddity—but it used to be easier to know that the attractive lead character was virtuous, just as the mustache-twirling side character was the villain. But with the first appearance of Tony Soprano, a violent gangster we could root for, writers began to craft all main characters as internally conflicted and morally compromised, crime-fighter and criminal, mama bear and femme fatale. (See Dexter, Hannibal , and Mad Men for more of this archetype). Audiences are willing to tolerate a lot from male antiheroes, partially because of historical precedent—as men have traditionally been in power, we expect our leading men to wield their power both for good and evil. But a good woman who goes bad? That prototype is sexy and revolutionary as hell—and we see that reflected in the constant shaping of the beautiful villainess, a woman who gets by being bad because she looks so good doing it. To be a woman aware of and in control of her sexuality is to be newly powerful, potentially dangerous, and thus, perfect material for the perfect anti-heroine.

The introduction of Weeds, a half-hour comedy about a pot-dealing widow, shone a whole new light on the suburban femme fatale, especially one who comes into her own by way of her criminality and who, newly single and newly living a life of crime, gets to be a fully sexualized force of nature. Nancy Botwin (played by the radiant and ballsy Mary-Louise Parker) would do anything to keep her upper-middle class lifestyle in check—be it selling dime bags to teenagers, collaborating with a Mexican drug cartel, or romantically tie herself to any number of criminals (a fraudulent DEA agent, the murderous mayor of Tijuana, a sleazy insurance magnate). Through everything, Nancy kept her family safe with her sexuality—even in the first season, Nancy has sex with a competing dealer to defend her territory. In many ways Nancy acts as though she’s invincible—something she believes because society confirms her ability to pass unnoticed through the criminal underground. When you’re an attractive prosperous white woman in a world dominated by impoverished non-white men, it’s easy to escape because you don’t look like a criminal. And yet Nancy’s good at her job because she’s selling herself as part of the product. Hell, Snoop Dogg even names her product “MILF weed,” because its delightful effects are exactly like Nancy. What makes Nancy an admirable yet deeply troubling anti-heroine is that she doesn’t mind being objectified in order to get what she wants—sometimes she even embraces it, because it’s an effective method of negotiation. In Season 3, she literally shakes her moneymaker to get a brick of product from another dealer.

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Nancy does the brick dance

What starts as a dance of awkward desperation very quickly becomes something fun for her—another moment for Nancy to hold all the cards, and get what she wants.

While Nancy discovers her powers of seduction on Weeds, many of our best antiheroines stride into view fully aware of their desirability. Fiona Goode, of American Horror Story: Coven, is a new version of the Wicked Queen prototype, updated and empowered for a 21^st century kind of sexuality and MILF-status. As portrayed by the eternally flawless Jessica Lange, Fiona is the reigning Supreme (head witch) of the Salem coven, a inherited title passed down to a witch who shows mastery of her craft (which includes the power of concilium, mind-control, often demonstrated as flirtation and coercion) as well as blossoming health and beauty. Power and beauty are inextricably linked in Coven, and so Fiona is obsessed with her looks, to the point where she tries to sell her soul to a voodoo spirit to guarantee “life everlasting—no aging, no decrepitude, forever.” Fiona knows exactly how powerful beauty is, because she’s wielded it from a very young age—at age 17, she killed the reigning Supreme so she could claim the title, and given that the lone witness was in love with her, she had someone to cover up the crime (and future crimes as well). Fiona’s desire to eliminate all competition is strengthened by her love affair with the Axe Man, a murderous ghost who can be summoned to do Fiona’s bidding. (All the men on Coven are sidekicks or love interests, never once dominating the storyline, and that’s radical all by itself.) Whether Fiona is actually in love with the Axeman is unclear, but one thing is for certain—Fiona’s best weapon throughout her life has been her beauty and desirability. Whether or not the writers of Coven stand behind Fiona’s deeds, there is no question that she holds the screen, as well as all the other girls in the coven, in her thrall—when you hand a role like this to Lange, it comes a performance that’s part camp, part feminist tour-de-force, and you can’t help but admire it, even when she slaughters everyone in her wake.

"Who's the Baddest Witch?" — “Who’s the Baddest Witch?”

It’s one thing to wield beauty deliberately, to bend the universe to your will the way Nancy and Fiona can. But can a beautiful anti-heroine ever accidentally wield this power? Even with intelligence, ingenuity, and fearlessness to wield, does beauty become the most defining characteristic of an anti-heroine?

The last thing a real anti-heroine wants to be is a “damsel in distress,” and yet Olivia Pope, Scandal ’s most morally messed-up “gladiator,” is constantly finding herself in scenarios where being an object of lust is the only thing that will actually rescue her. Olivia Pope (played by the fiercely intelligent Kerry Washington) conceives of herself as a hero, a champion for the underdog, someone who “wears the white hat” and has an unfailingly good gut sense of right and wrong. But whatever ivory, bone-white, or champagne-colored hat she wears, Olivia is almost never championing the underdog. In fact, for the first two seasons of Scandal, the vast majority of her clients are powerful people needing a “fixer” to protect their image. And what better champion to call upon then, than a woman who is all perfect surface and no moral core? True, Olivia is constantly calling people out on their vile actions, but very often she is speaking more to the Scandal audience (or to her adoring employees) than to the actual person needing a shakedown. Yet Olivia is never punished for this hypocrisy because, as the series progresses, she is primarily valued for her beauty and the influence it wields—specifically, on the men who can’t resist her. But she never fully understands what that power means.

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Fitz and Olivia

We know that Shonda Rhimes writes brilliant, passionate women of all orientations, races, ages, and life experiences. (We’ll be thanking her for Cristina Yang for years to come.) The development of the Rhimes heroine prototype makes for better and better television, and there’s no question that Olivia is part of that tradition—but she’s also a setback. Because every time she is imperiled, every time it looks like she will finally receive some comeuppance for any of the multitude of crimes she has committed, there’s a guy who loves her ready to swoop in and protect her. What the show does by making Olivia so desirable is actually reduce her exceptional qualities, and treats her more like a cardboard damsel in distress. (Unlike Fiona and Nancy, Olivia doesn’t suffer from the same delusions of untouchability, and that’s a byproduct of knowing just how hard she’s had to work as a black woman—class and race are a huge yet currently unexplored part of the Scandal storyline.) And while we’d like to say that Olivia’s love interests are merely incidental (and make for great soapy plotting), you could practically write a drinking game around what I call the “Pope” test. (Take a drink for any scene where two men talk to each other for more than a minute about someone other than Olivia. That’s one sober hour of television.) If Olivia really is claiming to choose herself, you’d think that would also mean choosing to take back the conversation about her own beauty, and what it can do. But instead of reckoning with that power, she constantly tries to throw it off, to disregard it or dismiss it as unimportant. And that doesn’t make her look strong—it makes her look naïve.

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Start at 0:52

So when we talk about television’s anti-heroines, which would we rather have—women behaving badly who are also, conveniently, beautiful? Or women who go full anti-heroine, knowing that they can be pretty when they need to? Making a female protagonist unaware of her own power, wherever it comes from, neuters her strength as a character. If Nancy didn’t know that she could get away with being a drug dealer, she’d never discover how much she could fight her own battles. If Fiona hadn’t known she was beautiful, she never would’ve become supreme. When will Olivia sit up and realize just how much she can take control of the men in her life, and use or discard them as she needs to? Rhimes has said repeatedly that she never intended Olivia to be a role model, that she “has always been an antihero,” and maybe that’s true. But maybe Olivia needs to realize that she might not be bad at the core, but being drawn that way sure makes being bad easier. And taking ownership of her sexuality, her allure, her ability to draw people in and make them love her isn’t a sign of weakness—it would be a sign of self-knowledge, and a new coat of armor. Just ask Amazing Amy. Or Cersei Lannister. Or Six.

Cersei Lannister, Six from BSG, Rosamund Pike as Amy — Cersei Lannister, Six from *BSG*, Rosamund Pike as Amy

Of course, it does pain me to think that we need more beautiful villainesses, more femme fatales, more female bodies on screen to ogle over and objectify. Haven’t we had enough of that? And if you’re anything like me, every reader of this site wants the same thing: to see more portrayals of women on film, televisions, and beyond that reflect their complexities, strengths and weakness alike. We want a greater range of body types, a greater representation of lifestyle choices, a broader world of occupations and skill sets and backstories and destinies. But if we’re going to ask for more valid portraits of strong women, we also have to validate more sources of power—and maybe in looking at television’s most beautiful antiheroes, we have to consider the value of beauty as a legitimate weapon, used for both good and evil. When it comes to my nightly viewing schedule, I’d rather have lots of beautiful girls acting out across the moral spectrum than simple pretty ingénues any day.

Jessica Carbone spends her days researching food history and editing cookbooks, and her nights writing film, television, and literary think pieces for The Rumpus, The Millions, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Recommended reading:

From The Artifice, “Olivia Pope as modern antihero”

From Complex, “the women of American Horror Story: Coven rewriting male-dominated television”

From Flavorwire, “Just Because There’s No Tony Soprano doesn’t mean we can’t have female antiheroines”

Older Women Week: ‘Fried Green Tomatoes’: A Celebration of (Older) Women

This is a guest review by Amanda Morris.

Sassy and fearless storyteller, 82-year-old Ninny Threadgoode (Jessica Tandy), takes Evelyn Couch (Kathy Bates) and viewers on a journey through a tableaux of Southern family and friendship in Fried Green Tomatoes. There’s a lot going on in this film worth talking about, from race and sexuality to class and masculinity. But let’s focus on how the film presents older women. Based on a Fanny Flagg original novel, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, the movie presents a vision of mature women who are survivors that guide their families and communities with compassion, stubbornness, and love.

Original trailer for Fried Green Tomatoes

Set in 1920s Alabama, Fried Green Tomatoes is a story about the healing power of stories, as much as it is about how Evelyn develops a friendship with Ninny that is forged from story. The primary characters are older women, with men taking supporting roles, which is an impressive reversal for any Hollywood film. The story within the story features the friendship and love between young Ruth Jamison (Mary-Louise Parker) and Idgie Threadgoode (Mary Stuart Masterson), Ninny’s family and friends from 50 years in the past. Ninny, Evelyn, Mama Threadgoode (Lois Smith), and Sipsey (Cicely Tyson) present four different views of older womanhood in this complex film that touches on many taboo subjects that older women aren’t usually permitted to grapple with on film. All four demonstrate the the kind of agency and decision-making prowess usually reserved for younger women and men.

“I’m too young to be old and I’m too old to be young,” Evelyn says to Ninny during one of their visits. Ninny asks a few pointed questions and then diagnoses Evelyn as going through menopause. This subject opens the door to a further conversation about Ninny’s son Albert, “the Lord’s greatest gift,” who died at 30. Mentioning child death and menopause in the same scene is unusual, not to mention the casual and straightforward way it is handled, without excess drama or emotion. Rather, these issues are presented as just a part of life, and Ninny’s wisdom is hard-earned and taken in stride, which helps the middle-aged Evelyn change her own attitude about feeling depressed and lost.

For Ninny, who remembers by the end of the film that the most important thing in life is “friends, best friends,” keeping friendships alive through story provides a pathway to both the fascinating past and the unknowable but exciting future. On her birthday, Ninny tells Evelyn not to fear death because even though she is “at the jumping off place,” she isn’t scared at all. Ninny’s spirit is energetic and intoxicating as she regales Evelyn (and us) with the life and times of Idgie and Ruth, including how Idgie was accused of murdering Ruth’s husband, Frank Bennett (Nick Searcy). Ninny’s frank mode of speaking, indomitable spirit, and ability to treat everything as an adventure, even while sampling the fried green tomatoes that Evelyn brings for her birthday, sets this character apart from other representations of older women on screen. In fact, Ninny is so different from our expectations of an 80-something woman that the disconnect between Ninny and the nursing home where she lives becomes starkly apparent when Evelyn discovers that Ninny really is meant to stay in this dying, sad place for good.

In American society and in Hollywood films, too often women are invisible, much less a force to be reckoned with. Older women in particular are meant to be hidden away, not viewed as holders of wisdom or desired as sexual beings or feared as people who could create change or cause damage. And when women ARE a force in film, there tend to be dire consequences for demonstrating independence and strength. This is not the case in Fried Green Tomatoes. Ninny and Evelyn are older female characters who not only carry the film with their stories but also demonstrate real strength and determination in the face of denial, obstinacy, and youthful swagger. Consider one of my favorite scenes in the final third of the film where Evelyn stands up to two young women over a parking lot slight:

Evelyn discovers her inner Towanda

Who else hasn’t wanted to react this way when cut off in a parking lot or in traffic? Evelyn’s action is cathartic for older female viewers as we imagine ourselves in her seat, embracing our inner Towandas right alongside her. She is accessible because she is imperfect, emotionally complex, and full of vigor. As a character, Evelyn is not just a reflection of Southern middle-aged womanhood; she is a modern Everywoman and we cheer for her every discovery and improvement that she makes for her own benefit, such as her decision to invite Ninny to live with her and Ed (Gailard Sartain), who is less than thrilled with the idea.

When Evelyn states, “Don’t you ever say never to me,” this is a direct reflection of Ruth’s statement when she and Idgie have to jump from the train. The scenes in this film intertwine and interconnect in ways that help viewers see older women as positive, strong, and wise role models. Even the tertiary but important characters of Mama Threadgoode and Sipsey show strength and determination when it isn’t popular or socially acceptable to do so.

The scene where Sipsey stands up to Frank Bennett and says, “I ain’t scared of you,” sets the stage for her later accidental murder of the man when he tries to abscond with his and Ruth’s infant son from the Cafe.

Cicely Tyson as Sipsey

While murder is decidedly against the law, audiences are meant to sympathize with this older Southern black woman who is standing up to white male domination.

As for Mama Threadgoode (Smith), she also stands up to societal expectations when she invites Ruth to stay for the summer as a way to reach Idgie. She says to Ruth after Idgie, who appears indifferent to Ruth’s presence, walks away, “Oh, it’s got to work. Somebody’s got to help her and I can’t.” The expectation is that mothers can fix their children’s problems, and Mama Threadgoode reverses that expectation by reaching outside for help.

Nominated for two Oscars (Best Actress in a Supporting Role and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published), Fried Green Tomatoes weaves a moving picture of older women that is uplifting even as this vision borders on the sentimental. Gentle strength is the beating heart of this story, embodied by the older female characters who weave powerful stories that are strong enough to heal even the toughest cynic among us.

Amanda Morris, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of multiethnic rhetorics at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, and when she’s not writing or wrangling students, she loves shark fishing, gardening, and cooking with her man.

Women in Politics Week: "The Women of Qumar": Feminism and Imperialism in ‘The West Wing’

CJ Cregg (Allison Janney) in The West Wing

Guest post written by Pauline Holdsworth.

CJ: They beat women, Nancy. They hate women. The only reason they keep Qumari women alive is to make more Qumari men.

Nancy: What do you want me to do?

CJ: How about suggesting that we sell the guns at them, suggesting that we shoot the guns at them? And by the way, not to change the subject, but how are we supposed to have any moral credibility when we talk about gun control and making sure that guns don’t get into the hands of the wrong people? God, Nancy, what the hell are we defining as the right people?

Nancy: This is the real world, and we can’t isolate our enemies.

CJ: I know about the real world, and I’m not suggesting we isolate them.

Nancy: You’re suggesting we eliminate them.

CJ: I have a briefing.

Nancy: You’re suggesting –

CJ: I’m not suggesting anything. I don’t suggest foreign policy around here.
Nancy: You’re suggesting it right now.

CJ: It’s the 21st century, Nancy, the world’s gotten smaller. I don’t know how we can tolerate this kind of suffering anymore, particularly when all it does is continue the cycle of anti-American hatred. But that’s not the point either.

Nancy: What’s the point?

CJ: The point is that apartheid was an East Hampton clambake compared to what we laughingly refer to as the life these women lead. And if we had sold M1A1s to South Africa 15 years ago, you’d have set the building on fire. Thank God we never needed to refuel at Johannesburg.

Nancy: It’s a big world, CJ. And everybody has guns. And I’m doing the best I can.

CJ: (tearfully) They’re beating the women, Nancy. — “The Women of Qumar,” Season 3, Episode 9, The West Wing

“The Women of Qumar” originally aired on November 28th, 2001, approximately two months after the first American airstrikes in Afghanistan. That timing is crucial to consider when looking at how this episode presents an imagined Middle East. Though The West Wing is often billed as optimistic counter-history and as an antidote for the policies and politics of the Bush administration, the show’s Qumari plot line is much more of a fictional transcription of current events than it is a progressive alternative. Most importantly, in creating Qumar as a fictional country meant to evoke the worst American fears and prejudices about life in the Middle East, Aaron Sorkin effectively packages and sells many of the motivations behind the current war in Afghanistan in the guise of progressive entertainment.

Nancy McNally (Anna Deavere Smith) CJ Cregg (Allison Janney) in The West Wing

A kind of “I speak for all women” conviction is displayed by Press Secretary C.J. Cregg in this episode, whose conversation with National Security Advisor Nancy McNally (Anna Deavere Smith) suggests her belief that all other female members of the administration share her perspective. Her suggestion that all-out militarism is an appropriate reaction to the gender-based oppression experienced by the women of Qumar is troubling on several levels. First, it contributes to a “savior” narrative which glosses over the very real existence of gender-based violence and oppression in North America and paints Middle-Easterners as explicitly violent, backwards, and misogynistic. Second, since Qumar is a fictional amalgamation of various imagined versions of Islamic countries in the Middle East, it’s implicit in C.J.’s argument that Islam is a chief factor in these women’s oppression — a loaded assertion which makes troubling assumptions about the experiences of Islamic women, particularly with regards to personal agency and faith.

It’s also worth noting how convinced C.J. is that the United States will one day be at war with Qumar. “This isn’t the point, but we will. Of course we will. Of course we’ll be fighting a war with Qumar one day and you know it,” she tells Nancy. And by the end of the fourth season, the United States and Qumar will be at the brink of military conflict, but it won’t be because America has stepped in to nobly rescue the women of Qumar from their religion and culture — it will be the end result of a series of events set in motion by President Bartlet’s authorization of the extrajudicial assassination of the Qumari defense minister, Abdul Shareef.

“The Women of Qumar” won Allison Janney an Emmy, and contains what is perhaps her most impassioned speech on women’s issues. It’s framed as a look at C.J.’s personal, emotional side and seems largely intended as character development — but as the Qumari plot line becomes more and more important throughout the next two seasons, C.J.’s initial framing of the issues becomes more integral to the show’s moral stance on militarism and foreign policy. Her outbursts in this episode seem intended to garner emotional support and lend legitimacy to the Bartlet administration’s foreign policy, which tends to favor intervention and unilateral strikes and which often betrays a belief in the inherent moral superiority of the United States as a kind of self-appointed global police. Rather than presenting C.J.’s perspective as a morally ambiguous mobilization of feminist rhetoric in the service of imperialism and militarism abroad, her speech in this episode is glorified as a noteworthy example of her personal feminist politics.

In “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse,” Chandra Talpade Mohanty writes, “I would like to suggest that the feminist writings I analyze here discursively colonize the material and historical heterogeneities of the lives of women in the third world, thereby producing/re-presenting a composite, singular “Third World Woman” — an image which appears arbitrarily constructed, but nevertheless carries with it the authorizing signature of Western humanist discourse.” In “The Women of Qumar,” this amalgamating force is literally employed as a plot device, one which creates an archetypal Third World Woman and then invents an amalgamated nation around her.

One of the most troubling moments in C. J.’s conversation with Nancy is her statement, “Apartheid was an East Hampton clambake compared to what we laughingly refer to as the life these women lead” – a statement that paints this amalgamated, fictional country (which refers back to viewers’ hazy imaginings of the Middle East as a whole) as a region so backwards, so violent, and so primitive that no women’s life there could possibly be worth living. In addition to erasing the diversity of Middle Eastern women’s experiences, C.J.’s words here suggest that she considers herself, as a white feminist, to be an authority on deciding whether or not the lives of racialized women are “real” lives. Given that many of these women would experience drastically increased violence and displacement as a result of an American investigation, her implicit suggestion here that the current “worth” of the lives of the women of Qumar is something for Americans to decide and for Americans to wager with is particularly problematic.

The Middle East appears so frequently in popular culture as a simplistic amalgamation of stereotypes that the practice has earned a name on TV Tropes. The site writes that this trope, “Qurac”, has three main iterations — an Arabian Nights version, a version featuring a tin-pot dictator, and “Jihadistan”. In all three, Middle Easterners are depicted as fanatical, violent, and greedy. The West Wing employs this practice again by inventing “Equatorial Kundu,” a “generic” African country experiencing civil war. In both cases, the insertion of fictional countries into real-world geography allows the writers to include what they consider to be “typical” Middle Eastern and African storylines, without being held accountable for perpetuating harmful stereotypes by any one real-world country or government.

CJ Cregg (Allison Janney) in The West Wing

The use of mainstream feminist rhetoric to justify and legitimize war hits painfully close to home, since The West Wing’s Qumari plot line was airing alongside the mobilization of this rhetoric in real time to advocate for an American presence in the Middle East. This rhetoric, which framed the war as an effort to liberate Middle Eastern women from the oppression of veil and Taliban alike, continues to thrive today — in the third presidential debate, both President Obama and Governor Romney displayed more enthusiasm for women’s issues when they fit into a narrative of militarism abroad than when they tied in to domestic issues. It’s worth noting that when asked directly about the gender pay gap and other women’s issues in the second debate, both candidates shied away from the question to refocus their energies on the economy — but though no questions about women’s issues were raised during the foreign policy debate, both were happy to offer unsolicited analysis of the U.S.’s responsibility to “protect” women’s rights abroad via drone strikes and continued American presence.

In the political context in which these episodes aired, the mobilization of imperialist feminism is not just a monolithic and over-simplified representation of feminist politics, but also a troubling repackaging of war in an otherwise-progressive show.

More broadly, Aaron Sorkin has been criticized throughout his career for his tendency to “[create] one-dimensional female characters in male-dominated settings,” as Ruth Spencer wrote in The Guardian. Though The West Wing brought us Allison Janney’s fantastic portrayal of C. J. Cregg, it’s also rife with women who waver between being genuinely-realized characters and caricatures of strong women in politics — for example, Amy Gardner and Abigail Bartlet. When it comes to representing feminist politics, The West Wing tends to funnel women’s issues through one character and one character only in any given episode — and given that character is more often than not Amy Gardner, the show’s representation of feminist advocacy in politics becomes limited.

In addition to C. J.’s speech, “The Women of Qumar” is also notable for the introduction of Amy Gardner, played by Mary-Louise Parker, who would frequently act as the face of the show’s feminism throughout the rest of its run. When Amy is introduced, she’s arguing with Josh about legalizing sex work, a conversation in which she dismisses Josh’s concerns about “creat[ing] more criminals in a criminal environment” and disregards questions of women’s ability to unionize, access social services, health care benefits, and exert a degree of control and regulation within their industry. Amy often seems to be convinced that she speaks for American women as a whole and knows what’s best for them, a conviction which is rarely problematized by a show which by and large neglects to present contrasting feminisms or delve into any women’s concerns beyond the discourse of white mainstream feminism. Though she and Josh often fight over women’s issues, their conversations more often devolve into flirting than they do into substantive engagement with the issues at hand. In “The Women of Qumar,” Josh’s suggestion that her desire to police sex work is at odds with a belief that the government should stay away from women’s bodies is a compelling and worthwhile discussion, but one which is, disappointingly, left to fall by the wayside in favor of their interpersonal chemistry.

The issues raised here point to a larger issue with the way feminist politics are represented in the show — a tendency to engage with feminism on a surface level and a failure to adequately inhabit its complexities and contradictions. And by privileging a certain brand of white mainstream feminism and by failing to place that feminism in any sort of critical context, The West Wing’s foray into political feminism is, for the most part, a missed opportunity.

——

Pauline Holdsworth is a fourth-year English student at the University of Toronto, where she is the Editor-in-Chief of The Strand. She also covers women’s issues for Campus Progress. You can follow her on Twitter at @holdswo.