I'm Still Waiting for 'Ballerina Husbands...'

The cast of Baseball Wives (VH1).

On Wednesday Nov. 30., VH1 will premiere the reality show Baseball Wives. The series is one of many spinoffs of the successful Basketball Wives franchise, which includes series such as Basketball Wives LA and Football Wives. Upon seeing the trailer for the show, I realized how many reality shows there are about ‘wives.’ Some examples include The Real Housewives franchise, Mob Wives, and Love & Hip Hop, a series following the wives of famous rappers. National Geographic is even jumping on the trend, with the series Wild Wives of Africa, which is about female animals in wild habitats. No, really. Even though all of these series have different casts of women who presumably come from different backgrounds, all of the ‘wives’ shows have one common feature: drama. These shows exploit the women, showcasing their jealousy, pettiness and plenty of weave-pulling cat fights. VH1’s blog for Baseball Wives shows the women in skimpy outfits while they attempt their best pinup poses. What does this have to do with baseball again?

             But my real problem with all of these ‘wives’ series is that the only reason these women are being featured is because they have prominent husbands. The trend of shows revolved around wives displays the double standards that are common in our society. There is still much more pressure for women to get married than there is for men, and women are often defined by whether they have a man in their lives. The pervasiveness of these shows suggest that the most women can seek is to be attached to a successful man instead of achieving such success themselves. But at the same time, even when these women do ‘achieve’ marrying a rich man, the media makes it seem as though these women deserve to be ridiculed for doing so. Many people dismiss the women on these shows as being golddiggers, and claim they don’t deserve to be on television. I’ve watched Basketball Wives as a guilty pleasure, and the women always make it a point to mention that there’s more to them than just being the wife of a famous athlete. Several of the women have their own businesses, went to college and are mothers. Basketball Wives itself is the business venture of Shaunie O'Neal, ex-wife of basketball star Shaquille O'Neal. Yet the titles of these shows undermine the importance of these women – because what matters most is that they are wives.

Would we be as quick to attack men if they were in the positions as these women, dismissing them as ‘jumpoffs’ of their more successful wives? It’s hard to imagine, since we are rarely presented with such a scenario in our society. The media only heightens the gender inequality – after all, there isn’t a chain of shows about men who are married to famous women. Most people would be hardpressed to even imagine what type of show that would be, since the most attractive, high paying jobs in our society have traditionally been coded ‘masculine,’ and the few career choices that we automatically think of as ‘feminine’ would probably make ridiculous television (‘Ballerina Husbands,’ anyone?).  But even if there were television shows following the husbands of famous women, I don’t think they would be throwing Smirnoff on one another.

Tough Love for VH1's "Tough Love"



The cast of Tough Love: Miami (VH1).

 A few weeks ago, the third season of the reality television program Tough Love, entitled Tough Love: Miami debuted on VH1. The series follows a group of single women, who are coached by relationship expert Steve Ward on how to become more confident and attract the right man. In each episode, the women are given a challenge (which are usually performed during dates, such as paying the bill or telling a secret), and then are given feedback from Steve during ‘bootcamps.’ I’ve watched the previous two seasons of this show and I really do like it (I’m a sucker for reality television, barring Jersey Shore). However, I’m not a huge fan of the messages behind the show, which are reflections of larger social attitudes.

The biggest problem I have with the show is that it is based upon a double standard. The women who appear on Tough Love have had bad luck in dating, and many of them desperately want to get married.  But women aren’t the only ones who have relationship problems – after all, most people want to find someone special. Yet the show only ‘fixes’ women, which sends the message that something is ‘wrong’ with a woman if she’s single. The series exploits the plight of single women, by mocking them for their faults. For example, in the first episode of Tough Love: Miami, Steve gives the girls nicknames such as ‘Miss Desperate’ and ‘Miss Drama Queen.’ In the second episode, embarrassing photos of the women were posted on a large screen when they were on dates, including one woman’s mugshot. Tough Love also revolves around heteronormative standards, as there have been no lesbians to appear on the show. This suggests that a man may be ‘complete’ without a woman, but women certainly aren’t ‘complete’ without men.

Of course, I don’t blame Tough Love for singlehandedly sending these messages. Society, friends and families pressure women to feel that they should be married by the time they reach a certain age. But instead of reinforcing these beliefs, Tough Love should be reassuring these women that it’s okay to be alone. At the very least, VH1 is attempting to fix Tough Love’s double standard by debuting a new show, Why Am I Still Single?, which will help both single women and men find love. Hey, it’s a start.

Pan Am takes flight

From Pan Am's pilot ep. - Maggie (Christina Ricci) and Laura (Margot Robbie). (ABC)

It’s impossible to talk about the wave of retro television this season without mentioning the ABC series Pan Am. The pilot episode debuted to good ratings, but opinions are mixed about the show’s quality. I found that Pan Am has a lot of awkward dialogue and unnatural conversations. The first scene, featuring a Pan Am flight preparing for take-off, takes entirely too long to reach a conclusion, capping in at 12 minutes. And yet, I think Pan Am is doing a much better job of showcasing the historical period of social change than The Playboy Club is. Unlike The Playboy Club, Pan Am doesn’t credit the stewardesses with revolutionizing the place of women in the workplace, but simply recognizes them as one part of a bigger whole. Of course, this doesn’t stop the show from glorifying them. The iconic last shot of the pilot episode features the backs of the four main female characters, wearing their stewardess attire and waving, as a little girl flashes them a reverent smile. The Pan Am stewardesses represented a combination of the traditional perfect woman, and a new, glamorous ideal: the career woman.

At MSNBC.com’s Overhead Bin, former real-life Pan Am flight attendants tell their stories and critique the show’s mostly accurate depiction of the airline. Helen Davey, who worked as a Pan Am stewardess from 1965 to 1986, tells Overhead Bin, “…we all thought we had lucked into the best job in the world.” Within the show itself, a male pilot even states that the women of Pan Am were ahead of their time: "They don't know they're a new breed of woman. They just had an impulse to take flight." But if the Pan Am stewardesses were the prototypes of the ‘modern woman,’ they were members of an elite club – a very tightly controlled one. As reflected on the show, the women of Pan Am had to be 5’2, single, skinny, and were regularly checked to make sure their girdles were on properly. And, of course, only white women were able to step into the revered position. Thus, like The Playboy Club, the ticket to liberation for women was a pretty face.

But what stood out to me most is that I found the female characters to be so much more endearing than the leads in The Playboy Club. I really liked Laura, the newest stewardess who ran away from a marriage her mother was pushing her into (although, what’s with the ‘new girl’ in both this show and The Playboy Club being blonde? Is it supposed to add to their naïve ‘everygirl’ appeal?). Laura’s sister, Kate, is also a stewardess, and is using her position to work with the CIA. I really hope the series explores the relationship between the sisters, because Kate is the person who helped Laura decide not to get married and to live for herself. Despite this, their relationship is already being tested by Laura choosing to become a Pan Am stewardess, putting Kate’s secret mission in jeopardy. I also found Colette, a fellow stewardess with a funny French accent who has an affair with a married man, to be a very sympathetic character. And as an ensemble cast, the women of Pan Am are convincingly interesting. At the very least, Pan Am makes a fairer case for the women of the 1960s than The Playboy Club does: they were controlled, objectified and trivialized, but they were also learning how to take their destinies into their own very capable hands.

A Review of The Playboy Club - "As Long as They're Still Sexy."

This Monday, the NBC series The Playboy Club debuted to mediocre ratings and even worse reviews. Critics complained about the series use of ridiculous plotlines and bad writing. Case-in-point, the first five minutes features Maureen (played by Amber Heard), the newest ‘bunny’ at the infamous Playboy Club, killing a mob boss with her stiletto after he tries to rape her. But even with its convoluted premise, The New York Times notes that The Playboy Club, along with several other shows debuting this season set in the Mad Men era, offers a setting that demonstrates to viewers the raging sexism of the time:  these series can help showcase how far along we’ve come. The narration, done by Hugh Hefner himself, even credits the club with the shifting political atmosphere: "The world was changing. And we were the ones doing it." Protestors and bra burning be damned – women earning the right to equal pay? That was all Playboy.

A scene from The Playboy Club. Photo by Matt Dinerstein (NBC).

Unfortunately, even with the opportunity to portray the strong females who pioneered social and political change, The Playboy Club hasn’t quite taken that chance up. Lingering camera shots display the bunnies’ best assets, while the script doesn’t miss the opportunity to show the girls at a party in their pajamas. But this is to be expected – after all, female objectification is the standard for Playboy. What really bothers me is that for every displayed bunny tail, the series never stops to show the strengths these women supposedly posses.  For example, when lawyer Nick Dalton says that Maureen is “smart,” the audience hasn’t really seen Maureen showcase her intelligence – the only reason we know this is because someone (and more importantly, a man) thinks she is. Kate, a fellow bunny, also mentions how “nice” Maureen is, even though she hasn’t done anything beyond flash a pretty smile.  If Maureen is supposed to be a stronger alternative to the stereotypical ‘blonde bombshell,’ she’s failing miserably – she just feels undeveloped and flat. At least we know she can do the bunny hop.

After finishing the first episode, I have to question the whether this ‘wave’ of retro-era television series is really a good thing. Sure, these shows could teach younger generations about the inequalities of 1960s America. They allow us to collectively cringe at our transgressions of the past. But when a series does nothing but adhere to traditional gender roles, without offering anything new, isn’t that just glorifying those ‘good old days?’ If Hef’s narration is any indicator, then perhaps The Playboy Club is doing just that: “It was the 1960s, and the bunnies were some of the only women in the world who could be anyone they wanted to be.” But really, this quote needs to be modified to be closer to the sad truth. Within the world of The Playboy Club, the bunnies can be anyone they want to be – as long as they’re still sexy.