By Maya Brown
The new fall lineup is upon us. We’ve seen promos, we’ve heard spoilers, and we’ve watched interviews. We’ve read discussions about the new breakout shows and excited blogs about which will be the funniest. Well, here are my top three shows to avoid by all means–or at least to watch on Hulu with friends and mock.
Pan Am on ABC is debuting on September 25th. A drama about Pan American World Airways in 1963, it’s supposed to bring us back to a happier time. A time when women were nothing more than flight attendants prized solely for their looks. Here’s what I get out of the trailer: woman wants to travel the world so she decides to uphold the “international beauty and grace” by maintaining a certain weight, wearing girdles and obsessing about finding a husband; pilots talk about how Maggie has “never been flown,” which appears to be the their clever way of saying she’s a virgin. The Pan Am flight attendants are a “new breed of woman,” you know, overly perfect, all look the same, and only there to please men. Ah, yes, a better time when women had fewer options and the only way to have adventures was to wait on the people in charge. What a great concept to promote.
Not to be outdone, The Playboy Club, which premiered last night on NBC, showcases the first Playboy Club in Chicago in, you guessed it, 1963. Truly the year of the woman. For me, at least, this show is 100 percent worse than Pan Am. It glamorizes the sexualization of women. It strips us of all the gains we’ve made in the past fifty years. In this TV show, being a Playboy Bunny is the highest honor anyone could have, “It’s about making fantasies come true.” The girls “are either the living breathing fantasy that is the Playboy Bunny or you’re not.” How’ bout not. Gloria Steinem, who once went undercover as a Playboy bunny and is openly boycotting the show, says it best when she critiques the show for the way it “normalizes a passive dominant idea of gender. So it normalizes prostitution and male dominance.” The show is not only about how women please men but it makes a very seedy business look like the icon of the rich and elite in the 1960’s. Luckily, The Playboy Club has already spiked massive controversy from various groups so hopefully we won’t see much of it.
Last, but not least, is ABC’s Suburgatory, premiering September 28th. Subrgatory is about a teenage girl whose wealthy father moves her to the Suburbs because he thinks
she is falling in with the wrong crowd. This series obviously strives to show how Tessa, a New Yorker, makes her way in a new place but it only succeeds in personifying the stereotypes surrounding the wealthy suburbs. In one part of the promo she walks down the hallways and notices all the different nose jobs. Everything is bright pink, and every girl is a stick thin bottle blonde. Be on the look out for massive mean girls, girl fights, and over the top, drama filled plotlines. This isn’t how any girl acts, not even in the suburbs.
There were a few other new shows that looked pretty gag-worthy, but these three were by far the worst. So if you must watch them, watch them critically and for God’s sake watch them on hulu so the networks don’t get the joy of one more view.
What about “Charley’s Angels”? Sadly, scampering TV executives are trying to come up with the new “Mad Men” and have just managed to throw together some “jiggle” with outdated feminine characters who are treated like meat. And that’s just what I’m getting from the commercials! At least “Mad Men” tries to deal with women’s complex changing roles during the social upheaval of those times. “Playboy Club” and “Pan Am” seems to feature women who wait, happily, on men. Thumbs down.
Yes maame
I got a first glimpse of women without clothes, in a magazine which was stashed under the cushion of an old sofa chair, in a hallway where some older guys hung out. It was also a time of first puff of a cigarette, some cold swigs of a can of beer, and pretending that it tasted great instead of admitting it tasting worse than anything you had ever sampled.
Alright, I never bought one of these magazines, but I used to see them in certain places. I remember seeing two or more guys young and old making comments and appraising the women in the pictures as if they were really right there in person. I would also think how low life they were, especially the married guys, but its a free country.
The girls I went out with, dated, and became good friends with were nothing at all like the ones in this magazine, that is they did not have as much material possessions, access to wealthy guys, or complimentary cars and stuff but they were probably what every one of these rich prince charming types could only dream about.
I don’t hold the rags to riches against howard hughes, but the way he treated some of these women was not very just. I glanced at one or two of these magazines during a Greyhound bus trip, at a coffee newstand, and I was shocked by some of the articles such as what every playboy should have in his apartment, 1978, including at least one ounce of the best marijuana. There was also another article about how to tie a necktie, and how to undo it. Was this a handbook for creeps, and mamas boys or what.
After reading the book, when it his the public library, I would never allow any decal or other item with this rabbit emblem to be a part of my personal surroundings. I don’t put anybody down for it, its just that what I learned about this industry, and the man who started it is not something which I would be proud to be connected to in any form or manner. There was, and are still one or two criminal street gangs in Chicago who use this rabbit emblem as their symbol, and rightfully so since they view females as their own personal property, endanger their physical and mental health with dope, and consider themselves to be God’s gift to all women.
Respectfully Joe Zamora