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The show Fairly Legal opens with the heroine, Kate, stumbling out of her houseboat and dodging repeated calls from someone labeled “The Wicked Witch of the West.” We soon find out it’s her stepmother, a realization that’s set off with more calls accented by pictures of the Wicked Witch of the West, which beg the question “who does that? Who labels their phone that way? Really, who?” But no matter.
The Wicked Witch of the West turns out to be a cool, Grace Kelly-like blond named Lauren (wonderfully played by Virginia Williams), who appears to be exactly the same age as Kate. She’s crisp, poised, and wears her hair in a beautiful French twist. She also kicks ass in meeting after meeting, and relieves stress by withdrawing to the ladies room to scream into a bowl of ice water.
She is, in short, the best thing ever.
Now, call me crazy, but as I recall the Wicked Witch was not often thought of as ”totally dignified” ”a role model” “extremely well pulled together”. She was more “cackly,” perhaps, ”somewhat erratic,” at least outside the Gregory Maguire/Kanye West universe. So I was confused, until it was made clear that Lauren is Kate’s rightful nemesis when Lauren fires her assistant for showing up late and possibly stealing her stapler (well done, Lauren, he had the look of a tardy thief about him). Also, she doesn’t have much tolerance for Kate’s quirkiness (again, well done, Lauren – the fact that Kate is constantly showing up late to trials could perhaps be helped if she’d read Jen Dzuria’s fantastic article on the topic).
As Kate wept about how she refused to attend the reading of her father’s will because, maybe, he loved Lauren more than her I found myself pausing the show so I could shout, “I love Lauren more than you! I love her more than you! I would buy her a 1,000 staplers if she’d be my friend! Hell, a million staplers! All of them made out of gold!”
But I must be in the minority, because if a woman is elegant and put together and just plain competent it seems that she’s immediately labeled as an uber-bitch whose downfall we’re supposed to delight in on just about every television show.
Consider Desperate Housewives’ Bree van de Kamp. This was a woman who was able to refinish all of her own furniture, cook daily gourmet meals and still maintain a perfect hairdo. Those skills – and make no mistake, they are major skills- were consistently derided, Bree’s husband had an affair, her children hated her, and, rather mystifyingly, no one but a completely psychotic pharmacist seemed to realize what a catch she was.
But then, at least she had friends and wasn’t painted as a full-on-monster, just a woman to be pitied. Not so in Bridget Jone’s Diary! There, Bridget’s rival for Mr. Darcy’s affections, Natasha, had the audacity to be a trim, well dressed lawyer. She was apparently good at her job, also, rowing boats and chatting with Salman Rushdie, all of which made her loathsome. To be fair, she did clap her hands to try to get Mr. Darcy to pay attention, once, but perhaps she might be allowed one irritating tic when Bridget was allowed approximately 700.
It seems that life does not go well for the Natashas of the world, as Sex and the City’s Natasha had it no better. I always find this odd, as she struck me as the only true victim of the series. What was she, really? A beautiful 25 year old who seemed – astonishingly, by any standard – to have a staff job at Vogue and time to chair committees and hand-write thank you notes. She was also extremely gracious and polite to Carrie, right up until the point she found Carrie in her marital bed. Yet it was somehow acceptable that Carrie had an affair with Natasha’s husband because… Natasha was 25? She was better dressed than Carrie, probably without going into quite so much debt? She had a “bullshit name?”
In any event, Natasha revealed herself to be heartless when Carrie crashed her lunch to apologize for sleeping with her husband and Natasha essentially said “I dislike you very much, please go away.” Carrie went away, all right. She went away feeling absolved, delighting in the knowledge that out there, Big was now single.
In Joan Didion’s freakishly good essay, “On Self Respect” she talks about character as being defined as someone who knows the consequences of their actions. Specifically she writes that, ”Like Jordan Baker, people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in an access of bad conscience, to receive absolution from the wronged parties… In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of mortal nerve; they display what was once called character.” The fact that Joan Didion cites Jordan Baker not Carrie Bradshaw most likely has little to do with the fact that SATC wasn’t on when she was writing the essay.
But we digresss! (Poor Natasha. Poor, lovely, Natasha, here’s hoping you came out on top in the end).
The last show I can remembered that depicted a perfectly pulled together woman well was Boston Legal. Candace Bergen’s character (Shirley Schmidt) was feminine, powerful, and the love object of both Alan Shore (James Spader) and Denny Crane (William Shatner). She seemed, in all ways, to be a woman worth admiring.
But then, that was a show geared towards an older generation. An older generation which perhaps appreciated cultivated skills rather than a sort of innate quirkiness in its women. Very few people say “I really loved Grace Kelly. You know why? Because she was so clumsy!” (Clumsiness itself seems to be a painfully irritating trait given to kooky/adorable female characters in most modern programs to prove that they’re just like us! Never mind the fact that most of us don’t stumble over objects constantly or find ourselves forever setting fire to things). And this is a pity, because it lowers the bar on the kind of woman it’s okay to be. Whereas once young women might aspire to be eloquent, graceful as poised as Grace Kelly… well, now you should just be flustered, clumsy and cute. That is, if you want to be loved.
To be fair, we’re all inept in our own ways – even the Natashas and Laurens of the world, who may not outwardly seem so. But the only real failing of these villainous women is that they don’t appear to be outwardly incompetent. They don’t run out into the streets in their underwear, they don’t stumble out of inappropriate booty calls, they don’t set houses on fire. But these are not flaws. And the fact that there is no element of Lucy Ricardo about them shouldn’t make them unlovable. Because if they are, then it undermines the potential in all of us.
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I think the trope in question is that being unusually well put together means, by definition, that you care more about the surface than what’s emotionally honest, and, in a visual medium, it’s a visual shortcut to denote hypocrisy. (You see this in “Bridesmaids” too, by the way.) It’s practically the entire raison d’etre of Mad Men: look at those great clothes and the repressions they hide!
This is, in fact, the chief weakness of Don Draper as a character: he seems to have no real weaknesses–at least, none that he suffers for long term; nothing that makes you wonder if he’s going to survive. This makes him the Grace-Kelly-in-Rear-Window of modern TV. But even in the Grace Kelly era, you also had movies like The Philadelphia Story and Holiday and You Can’t Take It With You and My Fair Lady where the whole point is that simple, unpretentious folks, with all their flaws in high society, are more lovable than patrician jackasses with sticks up their tuchuses. It is also basically the motif of every country song since the genre was invented.
I guess what I’m saying is that put-together women aren’t exactly evil (in Fairly Legal, in fact, one of the arcs is that Kate learns that her stepmom is actually a very kind person of quality–and a similar story gets told over seven seasons of Gilmore Girls). It’s that RICH people aren’t quite as likable as people like us. Why is this happening all of a sudden? I’d be very surprised if the economy didn’t have something to do with it.
Seriously? Okay, so Lauren is pulled together – she seems a bit cold, aloof, unfriendly… shall I go on. I don’t dislike Lauren, but I really do like Kate. And, not because she is always late, but she is open, friendly, kind and is interested in justice – Lauren is more into money. I know, I know, how else will they survive. Still, there has to be a villainess to make the story worth watching. Besides, can’t you just see the two of them somehow becoming friends? I can.
I do wholeheartedly agree that inept klutziness is being promoted as loveable, and that this is a worrying trend: the only thing I will say in its defence is that most of us feel inferior in some way to a love rival, à la Carrie in SATC, and since TV has only shorthand to work with, making the rival impossibly young, wealthy, blessed and model-like allowed us to recognise in Carrie our own feelings when we’re spurned.
I was actually dumped in my 20′s by someone I believed at the time to be the love of my life (don’t vomit!) for a woman I genuinely think was considerably less attractive than me – also, less funny, talented, and smart: believe me, that hurts even more, for all kinds of obscure and primal reasons. I know I sound like an arrogant b-word writing that, but I ask you ladies to consider how you’d feel in the same situation…. ;)
I didn’t like the way they treated natasha in satc either…Carrie has always irked me though. I didn’t really take notice of the whole clumsy girl=cute until I read the Twilight series (terrible writing, I know) I found it very disturbing that there are millions of teenage girls who look up to the bella swan character, a character who admits to being clumsy, is anti-social, complains about everything and is basically a weakly written character. It makes me a little nervous to see how the girls who site that book as a favorite tackle on adulthood.
Amazing.
The character Jordan from Studio 60 is an awesome pulled together female character with flaws. She’s a hardcore business woman, sometimes a bitch, has serious personal life struggles. She really was the kind of woman that normal women could not only identify with, but also inspire to be like, in some ways. She balanced a high power job (president of a network) with impending motherhood.
But of course, like everything else with that fantastic series, she probably won’t ever be cited as a powerful, poised, and likable female character.
A poised protagonist would work well as long as they display some sort if issue that she hides personally and battles with. A protagonist, male or female, always need to have a conflict or else they seem flat and unrealistic. Rich, put together males are either cast as villains or as troubled guys that either indulge in self-destructive behavior or are witty etc but have some painful past. I don’t think it’s a gender thing. HOWEVER, the whole “an organized women is evil” archtype has a lot to do with people perceiving them as having a “stick up the ass” attitude.
perfect. thanks for writing this!
I struggled watching Fairly Legal specifically because I don’t find being late or just not showing up to meetings cute. I find it obnoxious. And I love Lauren.
“Never mind the fact that most of us don’t stumble over objects constantly or find ourselves forever setting fire to things”
Speak for yourself!
Lol ditto. On the way out of my house this morning I hit my head on the door frame. Then I hit it again getting into my car. At least I was on my way to a good job, though, and not, like, to go frolicking in weird jean overalls or something.
Meh, perfect women are boring. Sure these movies are terrible, but they’d be even worse if they didn’t have a heroine most normal women could at least sort of identify with. I don’t think there would be much of a story in any movie ever if perfect, competent people were always the protagonists. (Although some films show that perfection is often just a facade for some deeply fucked up shit.)
I thought about this stuff a lot when Bridget Jones came out, because it was like: What if Mr. Darcy fell in love with Kitty (not even Lydia, the instigator, but Kitty, the bumbling, slow-witted follower) instead of Elizabeth? It’s totally implausible! But it’s also a warm, cuddly hate-fest because you get to dump on the accomplished lady and also look down on Bridget, who is probably a bigger slob than you.
And Shirley Schmidt was awesome. Remember when Alan Shore dressed up as her for Halloween?
This piece is perfect, except for the part where you say that Jordan Baker is cited instead of Carrie. Jordan admits her flaws; Carrie doesn’t – I thought that was the point?
But I agree. For whatever reason, we’re supposed to identify with women who aren’t put together, women who – in the case of Bridget Jones – require a freakin’ map to know where Germany is. And that’s really a shame.
Exactly – I’m saying that Joan Didion wouldn’t think Carrie Bradshaw has any character.
Gotcha. :)
Brilliant. It is feminist and modern and yet denounces all those things. It makes me want to be poised and aspirational, even though I’m more the kind of woman who gets really drunk at parties and hits on men, who I know are in love with me. Although, this must at least mean I’m loved. Very, very loved.