2008 Woodie Awards
Lipstick is more than a jungle
Meryn Fluker - The Daily Iowan
Issue date: 2/7/08 Section: 80 Hours
We've come a long way, baby, since the days of Mary Tyler Moore tossing her hat into the air and ushering in a new identity for women on television. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and Moore's character, Mary Richards, made it far less taboo for women to focus on successful careers instead of waiting to be swept off their feet. Without her, it's hard to imagine strong, but neurotic, female protagonists such as Ally McBeal and Carrie Bradshaw getting the chance to rule the airwaves and bask in the glow of Emmy gold.
While the successful single female is no longer a revolutionary presence, either in reality or on television screens, she doesn't look as she used to. A new show, "Cashmere Mafia," gives us a glimpse of Mary Richards 2.0. She is a corporate executive cloaked from head-to-toe in designer duds, loves a good martini after work with her girlfriends, and is more aggressive than ever. Whereas the original shrunk in the presence of her boss, Lou Grant, the women of "Cashmere Mafia" are the bosses, and they aren't afraid to call the shots. She can take the form of a single woman who is sexually assertive (or, in the case of Samantha Jones of "Sex and the City," near the territory of a four-letter word I would never use to describe a sexually insatiable woman) or a married mother of two, such as the "Cashmere Mafia" character Zoe Burden.
All of this should feel like progress, but there's a bizarre cognitive dissonance that comes from being a driven woman who is also a television junkie. I can't stop watching "Cashmere Mafia," which had its début in January on ABC. The show relies on what now feel like clichés of female executives in the new millennium.
These archetypes were given life, much more imaginatively, on "Sex and the City," which shares writers and producers with "Cashmere Mafia." The show plays on my desire to be the smartest woman in the room, make all of the decisions, and still (one day) be able to be a good wife and mother, all while wearing Jimmy Choos and power-walking through the Big Apple. Yet the viewer in me knows that the characters are flat, the plots are stale, and the dialogue is just too easy (I mean, calling pre-business-trip sex a "bone voyage" hardly takes an intellect developed beyond the high-school level).
While the successful single female is no longer a revolutionary presence, either in reality or on television screens, she doesn't look as she used to. A new show, "Cashmere Mafia," gives us a glimpse of Mary Richards 2.0. She is a corporate executive cloaked from head-to-toe in designer duds, loves a good martini after work with her girlfriends, and is more aggressive than ever. Whereas the original shrunk in the presence of her boss, Lou Grant, the women of "Cashmere Mafia" are the bosses, and they aren't afraid to call the shots. She can take the form of a single woman who is sexually assertive (or, in the case of Samantha Jones of "Sex and the City," near the territory of a four-letter word I would never use to describe a sexually insatiable woman) or a married mother of two, such as the "Cashmere Mafia" character Zoe Burden.
All of this should feel like progress, but there's a bizarre cognitive dissonance that comes from being a driven woman who is also a television junkie. I can't stop watching "Cashmere Mafia," which had its début in January on ABC. The show relies on what now feel like clichés of female executives in the new millennium.
These archetypes were given life, much more imaginatively, on "Sex and the City," which shares writers and producers with "Cashmere Mafia." The show plays on my desire to be the smartest woman in the room, make all of the decisions, and still (one day) be able to be a good wife and mother, all while wearing Jimmy Choos and power-walking through the Big Apple. Yet the viewer in me knows that the characters are flat, the plots are stale, and the dialogue is just too easy (I mean, calling pre-business-trip sex a "bone voyage" hardly takes an intellect developed beyond the high-school level).
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