From Maude to the Manny...
Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 11:01PM 
It was a big day for feminism in the Canadian media!
First, I was surprised to find this article in The Globe and Mail about feminism in contmeporary popular culture, or, I guess, the death of feminism in pop culture. And even a mention of the third wave -- startling!
"It is this, the plumbing, not the chromosomes, that define and estrange us from the brothers. But in the 1990s, at the height of the third-wave feminist movement, we did finally move on to self-definition without looking over at the boy's camp across the water.
At that time, autobiographical sex and erotic writing were popular and manifest, as were women with electric guitars, as was the very image of a woman so fluid in her possibilities, she could never be captured, let alone compared to anyone but herself."
Although I agree, I'm probably a bit less cynical than the overall article... Feminism is more "hidden" than dead...we have Jezebel and Bust, Marianne Pearl writing the occasional Glamour piece, and Sex and the City.
But... (which brings me to my next bit of feminist media attention today) do any of these pop culture phenomenons really discuss feminism?
With Bea Arthur's death this weekend, discussions about her legacy, and most often, her 1970s groundbreaking "feminist" show Maude have abounded. On CBC's Q this morning, Jian hosted an interesting panel about how Maude defied many unspoken, yet conventional TV norms relating to gender (the absence of well developed, engaging, and active older female lead characters, for one) and specifically raised feminist issues in a way never done before - like when Maude openly had an abortion (something that is still rare in TV today).
Since I'm too young to have watch Maude the interesting point for me was if any TV shows do today what Maude did three decades ago? Are our current "post-feminist" shows (and I suspect that Sex and the City probably fits more into this category...) raising feminist issues? Or do they assume that women are "past" things like pay equity, reproductive rights, and debates about childcare?
It's definitely worth checking out the podcast of this discussion here.
xo, jessalynn