Amid celebrating the 40th anniversary of Title IX this year and the Olympic Games, a study addressing women’s media consumption of sports has sparked some controversy. “Women (Not) Watching Women: Leisure Time, Television and Implications for Televised Coverage of Women’s Sports,” recently published in the journal Communication, Culture & Critique, centered on the question, “Why, [...]
BBC TV sportscaster Clare Balding was probably just trying to come up with a quick answer to a tough question. In a web chat on the UK blog Mumsnet last Monday, Balding answered questions about her career in sportscasting and how being gay and a woman have influenced her path. She told the web audience she [...]
If you’re excited about Brave’s strong, independent, animated hero Merida making her way to the big screen today, then check out Nickelodeon’s animated television hero Korra, who makes her way to the little screen this Saturday for the season finale of “The Legend of Korra“. For those not already hooked on the fantasy superpowers of [...]
In TV Guide Network’s Reality Chat, one of the hosts asks Bravo TV’s The Millionaire Matchmaker Patti Stanger, I love how honest you are. Do any of these women ever talk back and say, ‘Excuse me, but I’m an Amazon, or ‘I don’t want to put in hair extensions’? What do you say to them? Without [...]
In the social media era we live in, it’s hard for the personal to not be political. And often, for the political not to veer towards the personal. In the last couple weeks, for example, we’ve learned a few new things about Hillary Clinton. With the brilliant Texts from Hillary Tumblr page, we got to [...]
As a mid-to-late-20-something woman, I have grown up with a wide range of pop-culture representations of women, from the Wakefield twins of Sweet Valley High to Cher from Clueless to any part Winona Ryder played to blandly interchangeable rom-com leading ladies to the women of Sex and the City. I have loved and hated these [...]
There’s a moment in an episode of Mad Men last season when Don Draper’s newest secretary, Megan Calvet, sidles up to him, bats her eyes, and admits that she’d like “to do what you do or what Miss Olson does.” For a moment, it seems like a bold move–a woman at the show’s fictional advertising [...]
“Work It,” an ABC sitcom about two unemployed buddies (a car salesman and a mechanic), who dress in drag in order to land jobs as pharmaceutical sales reps, premiered on Tuesday night. According the the official ABC blurb, the main characters are victims of “the man-cession:” Lee Standish is a quick-witted and likable family man. [...]
If you’ve watched ABC lately, you have probably been bombarded with ads for its new, critically-derided comedy, Work It, in which two unemployed men cross-dress in order to obtain jobs as female sales representatives. The plot is as well-worn as it is far-fetched. Men being forced by circumstances to appear as women has long been [...]
Throughout most of its history, the general trend of television has been sexist, with lots of hysterical women driving dramas and lots of eye-rolling jokes about women being nags and prudes filling up sitcoms. The past decade, however, has seen a rise in high-quality television that strives to engage creatively with interesting, socially relevant ideas. [...]
