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Single Ladies By
Sundi

There is certainly no shortage of young, funny women on tv
this season. You can stop on any channel and see these
ladies running a bustling medical practice, single-handedly
making dorky sexy, and even successfully moving back in with
her parents. Single women are having a moment, and it is
hard to pin down whether this kind of character has come
along as a result of a cultural shift or if we are just now
noticing how funny girls can be (consider the success of
Bridesmaids as the
catalyst for this realization). Maybe those two things are
the same. Nonetheless, all the single ladies to which I
refer can be found in some of the network’s funniest and
smartest shows. The Fox Network is leading the charge with
The Mindy Project and
New Girl and ABC has
How to live with your
Parents (for the rest of your life). These three
shows might single-handedly remind us how funny women are.
While all three characters are different in their own right,
it is their particular brand of feminine-centered comedy
that strikes a chord with me, and I believe that is the
capital appeal among the target demographic.
Mindy Kaling has finally found a character in which, much
like Lena Dunham’s Hannah, there is an coexistence of
extreme confidence with crippling self-doubt. This makes us
relate to her; and instead of laughing at her, we are
laughing with her. Last week’s episode featured Mindy
training for a triathlon in which she assures her teammates
she can run a fifteen-minute mile. We know she can’t do it,
and she knows she can’t do, but it is endearing to see her
bravado and indignation at the suggestion that she can’t. It
is also pretty awesome when she pukes at the end of the
episode after a short sprint. This is fearless acting, as I
see it. Few other female characters can claim such a nuanced
psyche and flesh out the dynamics of even the most subtle of
female dynamics AND become a master at self-deprecating
humor. While sharing a scene with the beautiful and
ephemeral Chloe Sevigny, Mindy is approached by a group of
construction workers. She is astounded that they are coming
to the more “beautiful” women’s aid; going so far as to ask
her if Mindy is bothering her. Mindy has the confidence to
be outraged, but the insecurity to allow it to bother her.
This is the new kind of woman on television. One that can be
sad, or pathetic, or weird, or a mess, and we can still love
her. We still root for her, and we still think she is
wonderful.
The weird coalesces with the wonderful with Fox’s Jess on
New Girl . When this
show first started airing, the phrase “a-dork-able” was
thrown around quite a bit. When, in our lifetimes, has it
ever been sexy for a woman to be dorky? Can I please pause
for a second to say, “Thank you,” to Zooey Dechanel for
opening the door for girl-nerds?!! This is a whole new brand
of “girl power” feminism; the likes of which we have never
seen. Tuesday’s episode was a flashback episode where each
character shared stories of their first times, and Jess’ was
embarrassing, and funny and completely without the hokey
nostalgia or the feminist subtext. Jess, as the main female
lead, is both a highly feminist character AND a rebel to
feminist establishment. She pokes fun at traditional female
empowerment, recalling how her and her prom date were the
founding and only members of the “Gender Equality Society.”
They both asked each other to the prom and they both said
yes, “in the spirit of gender equality.” This quickly turns
satirical as he is trying to separate her from her dress
with meek-mouthed pleas such as, “I’m going to take off your
dress. Do I have your permission?” After much fumbling and
awkward misses, she yells, “Just be a man and rip it off,”
firmly cementing her place as the anti-heroine.
While the character of Jess is loosely a symbol for the
evolving ideals of what sexy is, what funny is and what it
means to be both, Sarah Chalke is back on network television
in a role that is not entirely new or particularly
ground-breaking, but is worth watching, nonetheless. Worth
watching because her character Polly is failing so
beautifully at life that the audience will forgive her
anything. The many neuroses that make up her character make
me much more inclined to forgive the parenting cliches and
voice-over life lessons the show forces on the viewer.
Polly; however, is another incarnation of the dazzling mess
that rings a little truer than her counterparts on other
channels. The fact that she makes bad decisions concerning
her daughter, feels damaged by her parents’ self-centered
take on child-rearing, yet still hauls out the lingerie to
intrigue her new love interest feels more familiar than any
other character out there. I am happy to overlook the goofy
and completely implausible relationship with the ex-husband,
the over-sexed grandparents and the awkward supporting cast,
because Polly encapsulates this new idea of
television-women: those that are messy, and flawed, and have
conflicted feelings about their lives; the kind of women
that you’re friends with, that you’re related you, and that
you might be yourself.
The opinions in these articles are those of the writer and do not
necessarily reflect the opinions of The TV MegaSite or its other volunteers.
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