Why I Hate TV Shows About Hating Teenage Daughters
November 30, 2011
by Patricia Garrison
|Hardly a week goes by without a Facebook friend posting one of those messages about the love they have for their daughters. While I’m typically not one to repost these updates, they now strike me less as genuine – if somewhat sentimental – proclamations than as unwitting political statements. They assert that regardless of what we read, what we hear, or how many times we are forced to listen to some ridiculous riposte about “mean girls”, we love our daughters. And we want to let the world – or at least our Facebook friends – know just how much. Someone needs to tell Fox.
I Hate My Teenage Daughter premieres November 30 on that network, and it promises to be chock-full of every tired, disproven, and discounted meme about teenage girls, and their mothers. The realities – be they scientific or societal – have informed us repeatedly that girls do not have a stranglehold on “meanness”. Boys are equally skilled at dispensing their own brands of adolescent humiliations on both genders, and their reckless behaviors can have damaging consequences. But, I Hate My Teenage Son just doesn’t pack the same provocative punch.
Not that I’m advocating for hating sons or daughters as the basis for any media offering, let alone a sitcom. I know of no parent who hates their child. Try as I might to get behind the humor here, the title and the premise are nothing more than cheap shots directed at their target audiences: Two mothers of teenage girls, both unpopular themselves as teens, have indulged their children so unselfconsciously that their offspring have become the girls they hated in high school. The mothers begin to witness the fallout of their lax parenting, and conspire to intervene and find crafty ways to reverse their daughters’ transgressions.
In theory, remediation would be on a parent to-do list. Maybe less indulgence, more involvement, a few well-placed deprivations might help, along with teaching by example. But, hate?
I admit it’s the word that bothers me. Stark, crass and so off-base that it startles on the face of it. So wrong is it to ascribe this emotion to the mother-daughter relationship that I can’t bring myself to go so far as to watch. I want to tell myself that it’s a stupid sitcom riding a tide of sexist stereotyping. But the mother in me is protective and angry. The network needs to watch its language, because words do damage. And the war against females doesn’t need any more ammunition.
It’s just more sexism on TV this fall. Retro sexist shows like Charlie’s Angles and The Playboy Club died quick deaths. I hope this show does, too.
And let’s not forget upcoming shows like Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23 and Good Christian Bitches (GCB). I wonder what would happen if there were television shows with racist or homophobic slurs. Oh, yeah, there would actually be some outrage.
Another pile of contrived sexist BS from Corporate Media. Where do they come up with this crap? Is it supposed to be “Women’s Content”? I am sure it will die a quick death. I would guess that the conservative Parents Television Council will protest and start an action against sponsors so if you all want to participate check their web site, I am also sure you won’t see any action from “feminist” orgs.
Oh and let’s all remember that in producing this seasons load of half composted sexist BS Corporate Media undoubtedly employed more women than last year! So of course we should all be grateful!! Never mind that the interests of female media consumers have been ignored AGAIN.
Actually, Women’s Media Center has a blog that discusses sexism on tv shows:
http://www.sexyorsexism.org/
It’s a terrible title but an intereting premise. So many parents have overindulged their children, boys and girls, that they’ve turned them into very unpleasant people. Can they be turned around?
I might have given it a look but for the title.
Bes, do you have a problem with feminist organiztions? I realize that they don’t always get it right but neither do they always get it wrong.
I have a problem with “feminist” orgs like NOW. They don’t know how to get or use power. They rarely comment on issues that affect women and when they do they ramble about how the thing they are complaining about is anti gay, racist and oh yeah, is harmful to women. Check out the Parents Television Council site, they have organized and figured out how to influence media, the “feminists” can’t even copy this effective method of dealing with media when someone else has thought it up and refined it.
I did look in on the Women’s Media Center site and it looks interesting. I especially like the comment that “I watched these shows so you don’t have to”. That saves me time and aggravation.
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