Variety's Brian Lowry on Anti-Feminist TV, and Why Julia Stiles Looks Ridiculous in Those Plain Beige Pumps

Variety columnist Brian Lowry isn't impressed with the current crop of one-note female characters on the networks' new shows. Trophy wives, party girls, and women who are defined exclusively by their relationship to a man - that's lame, insulting and demeaning to thinking women. Thinking women seem to agree: that's why these shows are tanking.

Eva Longoria and Marcia Cross prove there's nothing wrong with MILFs; it's not the characters that are the problem, but the characterizations. Lowry notes that women are more concerned right now with the fate of their good TV role models - cancelled President Geena Davis, deposed anchor Elizabeth Vargas - rather than the excruciating versions that crop up in low-rent sitcoms (and by extension, had to have passed script approval to get there). Says Lowry:

By supporting such programs, then, do women tacitly reinforce the underlying anti-feminist mindset that reduces them to facile and dismissive labels? If so, even knuckle-dragging men owe it to their wives, moms and sisters to say you needn't be a woman to see the insult in such imagery, and then, for the good of society, hide the remote control.

No, you needn't be a woman to see the insult - but you needn't be a woman, either, to assert it without apology. This thinking woman couldn't help but notice something odd about his column: his lede. Lowry opens with a disclaimer: he's not some feminist: "By any measure," says Lowry, " I'm the wrong person to lead a feminist crusade, inasmuch as I still giggle at Steve Martin's line that he believes in putting a woman on a pedestal 'high enough to look up her dress.'" Laughing at Steve Martin's line is one thing, wearing mirrors on your shoes is another, and Lowry knows this. It's his way of shoring up credibility, of disarming his audience. His intentions are good - making the messenger more palatable (red-blooded man vs. shrieking feminist) so that the message will be better received. Still, in a column wondering why attitudes toward women in the biz are so behind the times, it's more than a little ironic.

p.s. We agree that it's ridiculous to cast Julia Stiles, 25, as the mother of a six-year old - one look at her in those prissy beige pumps and Suzy-Homemaker dress - and shawl - underscores that point.