Ten of prime-time's most fabulous females

I stumbled upon this article and decided to reserve judgment until after I had read it in its entirety. My first assumption was that it would be a male entertainment writer's condescending attempt at giving recognition to the oft-overlooked female talent on television. I read through and my instinct was right.

TheStar List Week: 10 of prime-time's most fabulous females

Within the first three paragraphs, this quotation got me: “ 'It’s not just the man’s journey,' applauds Modern Family’s Julie Bowen, 'with the woman standing there shaking her finger, waiting for him to come back from, like, his fart fest with the guys...That is a huge change from the old standard Jackie Gleason format.' "

I know she's on Modern Family, but has she watched Modern Family?



Both female leads, Julie Bowen's Claire and Sofia Vergara's Gloria, are smoking hot stay-at-home moms who are paired with arguably less appealing male counterparts--Claire's husband, Phil, is an average-looking uber-dork who drools over his step-mother-in-law Gloria within plain eyesight of his wife; and Gloria's husband, Jay, is an old curmudgeon 20 years her senior.

The show may not portray only the man's journey, as Bowen naively lauds, but it certainly portrays the women as standing there shaking their fingers--I'm pretty sure this is one of Gloria's standard moves when she chastises Jay and her son, Manny--and waiting for them to come home. The only difference is that they're not coming home from "fart fests with the guys," they're coming home from work, a place to which neither woman ever goes. Claire is college-educated but feels she is needed around the house (despite the fact that her youngest child, Luke, appears to be in middle school and her teenaged girls are old enough to take the city bus and certainly don't need someone driving them to soccer practice or baking cupcakes for their class). Gloria stays home, too, but I'm not sure why she is needed there. She is not at all domestic--she can't bake or clean--and her precocious son, Manny, seems to raise himself.



I firmly believe that if a family is financially able to, of course one partner should be inclined to stay at home in order to give their children the most nurturing and enriching environment and bond possible. But why does it always have to be the woman, even when her children have far surpassed a need for her to help micromanage the minutiae of their lives? There is something tragic about the prospect of a middle-aged woman, who is less than a decade away from experiencing the sense of loss and insecurity that comes with Epmty Nest Symdrome when her children go off to college and the workforce, who has nothing with which to replace them--no job, no discernable hobbies, and few pasttimes besides rolling her eyes at her idiot husband.

Writer Rob Salem congratulates Claire for being as "goofy and neurotic" as her husband, Phil, but neurosis is a stereotypically female quality, and Phil is painted as an effeminate character (matched only by equally neurotic gay couple, Mitchell and Cameron). Only Jay, the patriarch of the family, is portrayed as the sane voice of reason in a family of feminine--both female and male--nuts.

I actually like watching Modern Family, but I acknowledge it for what it is: certainly not a groundbreaking formula that gives women an opportunity to challenge preconceived notions of traditionally female roles and responsibilities. It's just funny.

Let's not pretend it's anything else.