"TV Guide Article"

The article came from TV Guide Online, <URL:http://www.tvguide.com/tv/magazine/970127/ftr2a.sml and <URL:http://www.tvguide.com/tv/magazine/970127/ftr2b.sml


BLAND, BEAUTIFUL, AND BOY-CRAZY

[Illustration] Can TV do better in its portrayal of teenage girls? The author of the best-selling book Reviving Ophelia thinks so

B Y   M A R Y   P I P H E R

I'm writing this for Jennifer, whom I saw in therapy the other afternoon. Jennifer is smart, calm, kind, and witty. The high-schooler studies music at a special camp, has built a house with Habitat for Humanity, and enjoys traveling with her family and church youth group. As we talked, she told me that a big school dance was coming up and she didn't have a date. Even Chris, the boy who usually appreciates her for who she truly is, was avoiding her in the halls.

Jennifer, who is a tall, sturdy size 14, said, "Right now I want to be anyone but myself. I feel huge. God must hate me." I listened to her story and talked about ways for her to cope with the upcoming week. When she left, I looked out on the golden afternoon and thought, "Jennifer deserves better."

Certainly she deserves better from television. How it portrays young people matters to teens. It teaches them who to value and how to be, what to respect and what to despise. It teaches them how to dress and talk, and how to relate to work, school, adults, and family.

Adolescents have tremendous respect for television, and, like most Americans, girls yearn to see themselves reflected in the media. They feel proud when they see teenagers represented in national stories, and they long to see girls who look, act, and feel as they do. They struggle with images that don't mesh with who they are. Girls write me that Baywatch, with its buxom women in bathing suits, depresses them, and anorexic-looking stars make them hate their own bodies.

For the most part, network TV has a long history of failure when it comes to showing realistic images of women and telling our real stories. A 1992 American Psychological Association study found that women represented on TV tend to be young, beautiful, passive, and dependent. Older, competent, less attractive, and minority women are underrepresented, almost invisible. In other words, most of us are left out.

I remember my own sadness as a girl watching Miss America pageants and knowing that no one who looked like I did would ever be a contestant. I recall dating boys in junior high school who were in love with Mousketeer Annette -- not flat-chested, non-sultry, oily-skinned, dishwater-blond me.

What kinds of shows could change this pattern? What would help girls feel good about themselves and become more emotionally sturdy and better citizens? What kinds of shows would both help boys respect girls and help girls be all they could be? Here are my ideal criteria:

Girls of all ethnic backgrounds, degrees of attractiveness, and socioeconomic levels would be featured. Being different wouldn't be mocked or punished.

Girls would be the active subjects of their own lives, not the objects of others' attention. Their main characteristics would be their talents, intelligence, and character, not their appearance.

Plots would show girls in diverse roles -- not just as prom queens, rape victims, or call girls -- with diverse interests. They wouldn't all be mall rats.

Girls would be shown with people of all ages, and adults wouldn't always be portrayed as adolescents themselves. Other characters would relate to girls as interesting people worthy of respect.

Interactions between teens would encourage kind and decent behavior. Mean-spiritedness, smugness, harassment, and superficiality wouldn't be regarded as clever. Girls would like each other.

I know these criteria are unusual for a TV show. In my perfect world, there'd be a plot featuring a smart, plain girl who is helping older people rebuild a church bombed by racists. Or one about a shy girl who gets lost in the wilderness and survives by her wits. Not likely, I know. Still, more and more teenage girls have turned up as central characters on TV this season. Let's take a look at how they measure up.

When I asked the 13-year-old daughter of a friend to evaluate Clueless and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, ABC's shows about teenage girls, she said that the girls were nicer to each other in Clueless, but that both shows teach that unless you look a certain way, you can't be cool. Yes!

Photo credit: Photo illustration by Jennifer Jessee for TV Guide Photos: Sabrina the Teenage Witch by Frank Carroll/ABC; Sister, Sister by R. Cartwright/ WB; The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo courtesy Nickelodeon; Moesha by Carin Baer/UPN

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BLAND, BEAUTIFUL, AND BOY-CRAZY

I don't want to be too critical of these shows -- at least teenage girls are central characters -- but both are sadly lacking in what I'd like to see. It's to Sabrina's credit that the title character, who lives with her two witch aunts and receives her own magical powers on her 16th birthday, is an active person in control of her life. Her aunts treat her with respect and she relates well to them. Also, the show has its touching moments. I enjoyed Sabrina dancing with her cat after school and talking to her cat before bed. I know girls who do that. (Of course, Sabrina's cat, Salem, talks back.)

But Sabrina fails to meet many of my criteria. Sabrina is blond, well-off, thin, and, though she jokes about them, has no zits. Her aunts and all her friends are thin, well-off, and beautiful, too. There are dumb jokes about cellulite and the girls are mostly catty with each other.

Clueless's Cher, another beautiful, thin blond, lives with her rich attorney father in a mansion in Beverly Hills. Her greatest passions appear to be boys and shopping. Cher is the ultimate consumption junkie.

Many of the adults Cher encounters are on the same developmental level as the kids. As for her peer group, none of the teens is poor, plain, or even ordinary. I suspect no woman who wears above a size three is allowed on the set. With lots of chatter about nose jobs, weightlifting, social standing, clothes, and makeup, the emphasis is always on having a good body and getting a cool guy. In this show the girls live in an unreal universe and have the character depth of abalone.

I like the WB's 7th Heaven, a sparkly, happy family show with middle-class parents and five great kids. Just like the heroines of Clueless and Sabrina, the teenage daughter, Mary, is tall and slim with long, silky hair, but I felt good about the show in spite of its shine. The parents are competent and lovable and offer positive models for how to relate to children. The kids act their ages and worry about what kids really worry about: Can I get a dog? What does it feel like to be kissed? When will I get my period? The family has rituals, traditions, ties to grandparents, loyalty, and clear communication. Call me schmaltzy, but it's a touching show -- I cried when the 12-year-old daughter talked to her dad about her period.

I have mixed feelings about some of the season's returning shows. In the WB's The Parent 'Hood, about an upper-middle-class African-American family, Zaria, the adolescent daughter, is pretty, but she is also smart and athletic. The episode I watched dealt with a meaty issue: Should parents keep a teen from playing sports if her grades slip? To the show's credit, the parents are adults, the girl struggles with a moral dilemma, and, in the end, she does the right thing and makes a choice that suggests strength of character.

Sister, Sister, also on the WB, focuses on identical twins separated at birth but reunited when their respective adoptive parents move in together. The mother is like a goofy adolescent herself. The father is a little more mature, but he can't singlehandedly deepen the show. And the twins are boy-crazy, competitive, and mean-spirited. In one episode, the sisters want to be cheerleaders, but they end up on the "C squad" for girls with "odd bods." These girls are portrayed as enormous losers. There are jokes about weight-loss camps and fat girls. People are judged and mocked for their appearance. My grown daughter, who was watching it with me, said, "How would it feel to be the actress playing the fat girl in this show?"

One of my favorites is UPN's Moesha, about a middle-class African-American family in Los Angeles. The adults have values, self-control, and focus. Moesha's dad isn't a buffoon, but rather a good father. Moesha's stepmother is a serious person, a teacher. Moesha is assertive and brainy, a reader and writer. Her best friend, Kim, is pleasingly plump. Other chubby young women populate Moesha's world, and their size is not a joke or a mark of dismal social status. The show isn't perfect: The girls all wear designer clothes and Kim is boy-crazy, but the characters are likable and human, and girls are presented in some diversity.

Best of all is Nickelodeon's The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo, which is the '90s equivalent of the old Nancy Drew mysteries I enjoyed as a young teen. Shelby is bold, assertive, curious, and energetic. She's smart, but not as smart as she thinks. She wears overalls and flannel shirts and is definitely more interested in dolphins and crooks than in clothes. In fact, she loves the natural world and adventure. Shelby has good friends of both sexes. But most importantly, Shelby actually reminds me of girls I grew up with.

And that's saying something. While the good news this season is that there are many shows with teenage girls, the bad news is that most TV girls don't look or act like most of the girls I know. The girls I know are more active, thoughtful, complex, and interesting, and they come in all shapes and sizes. I'd like TV to reflect that reality. And I would like Jennifer to have a date for the dance.

Mary Pipher, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in Lincoln, Nebraska. She has also written The Shelter of Each Other and Hunger Pains.


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eric@ezz.u-net.com

Eric Last, 25/5/97

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