Yesterday's Woman #7

            Glamour. Power. Money. These nostalgic historical fiction shows provide us the American dream without ever working for it. History has a knack for romanticizing any era that has passed no matter what the reality of it was. In American Woman, the life we are told we should want is shown and brings us to a feeling of having everything at the palms of your hands. But it is also at the hand of the man. Bonnie Nolan’s lifestyle has no indication of her, it is from the comfort of her husband. With that being said though, it ends quickly, and she is left to be single mother with her two children.
           So, this is when I start to think, that maybe the appeal is not just the money or glamour but being able to see a woman be put in a situation that we are not used to seeing especially in a male-dominated time period. I am so used to see movies and television about the men of the 1970s with their cigars and big business. Woman usually seem to just be the pawns in the background of these programs as they act as an accessory to the man. Instead in American Woman, we are witnessing a woman thrown out of her regular element and into a world that has put all odds against the woman. It can fill us with a feeling of empowerment to see someone else who has faced the same struggles while navigating being a female in Western society. We can connect with women from all different time periods through shared experiences of finding out our own identity. We are able to see ourselves through these characters, celebrating their triumphs through the duration of the tv show. We relate, we feel – I think this is television doing what it is supposed to – making us feel something for what we are viewing. That feeling is nostalgia, that feeling is empathy, that feeling is power. We want these programs because we want history, but we want to see females in this history.
           I do believe there are good intentions with female led tv series created around the idea of female liberation, but one critique while watching American Woman was that I have seen this story line before. A woman finding her cheating husband and then leaving him to somehow find herself while being a single mother and trying to find a job. Yes, this has been done. I believe it takes on the second-wave feminist perspective continuously giving us this abrupt plot, but I want more. What happens 20 years after this? Where is her life now? These are the stories we want to hear, of the woman who have gone through it all and now have something to show for it. We as a people have been trying to move forward, so why doesn’t our television too? Someone let me know when we have a female lead in the Breaking Bad revival because this is the type of television we need in the future. We have our foot through the door, now lets walk through it.