30 Day Blog Challenge: Day 21

One of your favorite shows.

TV shows, you mean? I don't watch a whole lot of television, but the one show that I love dearly (and that's an understatement) is The Golden Girls.

(And that's me, watching it with my cat.)

The show was canceled in 1992--the year I turned four. So I don't really remember how I got into it. Like feminism itself, I wasn't raised on it. I just discovered it one day and was like, "Well, damn. This is really, really good. How did I ever live without it?" I blogged about it when Rue McClanahan died (almost a year ago now--wow).

But I think my friend Christi said it best: "Where else in pop culture do you see women of a certain age portrayed as anything but loony cat ladies or sexless grandmas? Dorothy and company lived it up well past the age most television characters even make it to."

I'll share something here that I've only shared with a couple of close friends, because it's embarrassing and kind of cheesy: I made the decision to transfer from SVSU to Wayne State while watching the final scene of the Golden Girls series finale. That particular episode just happened to be on TV at 1 o'clock on a Thursday morning (when I should have been sleeping but instead was thinking a little too hard about what the hell I should do with my life). Seeing that, I cried and cried and cried and then decided, like Bea Arthur did, that even though it had been mostly good in really surprising ways, it was time to move on.

Thank you for being a friend.

"No Easy Decision"

The other night, MTV aired an episode of their show 16 and Pregnant titled "No Easy Decision." Dr. Drew Pinsky interviewed three women about their experience with abortion. if you missed it, you can view it here.

I don't watch too much TV, but a former roommate of mine watched 16 and Pregnant all the damn time, so I'm more familiar with it than I'd be otherwise. As someone who is adamantly pro-choice, I couldn't help but notice that abortion was never mentioned as a viable option for any of the women whose stories were featured on the show.

So when I heard about this episode, I decided to tune in. I was intrigued. Skeptical, but intrigued.

Overall, I was impressed with how MTV handled the subject. I'm bummed that they didn't air it prime time. And I wish it had been longer than thirty minutes. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't all walking on eggshells. And they managed to cover a lot of ground despite the time constraints. Natalia, for example, got the judicial bypass. As feminist Shelby Knox tweeted the night the show aired, "Kudos to MTV for talking about how parental notification effects [sic] women."

But of course, there's been backlash. CNN's Brooke Baldwin said that Markai "got herself pregnant." And Bryan Kemper of Life News couldn't get his facts straight. In an article titled "Youth Pro-Life Leaders Respond to MTV's Abortion Episode," he twisted the words/emotions of the three women and decided that they must have regretted their decision to abort.

Katie Stack, who was one of the three women interviewed, responded to that by writing a blog post. In it, she explained that she didn't cry on camera because she regrets having an abortion, but because she loves her family and felt badly for hiding something so important from them for such a long time.

By speaking out, she's doing her part to end the stigma attached to abortion. To me, her blog post was just as brave as her willingness to talk about her abortion experience on television. Her explanation should not have been necessary. Why the hell should she have to legitimize her tears to anyone, least of all an anti-choicer who couldn't even put the effort into getting his facts straight? But she took the time to explain herself anyway.

And I'm so very glad about that, because as much as I wish people would just respect others' decisions, these are the very stories women need to tell if we're ever going to succeed in putting a face on the issue, and make people understand that pro-choice is not pro-abortion. If anything, her display of emotion should serve as evidence that this truly is not an easy choice to make.

As Katie so aptly pointed out in the interview, "It's a parenting decision."

RIP, Rue McClanahan (1934-2010)

I heard on the news that Rue McClanahan passed away this morning after a massive stroke.

The Golden Girls is my favorite show. It's a slap in the face of ageism; where else on TV do you see women their age playing something other than someone's grandmother?

In 2008, Estelle Getty--who portrayed sassy Sophia on the show--died. When The Golden Girls premiered in 1985, Getty was only in her early sixties. As Sophia though, she got to live it up well into her eighties. So it made me really sad to hear that at eighty-four, she died after a battle with dementia, of all things.

I find McClanahan's death just as ironic as Getty's. She was over a decade younger than her costars (including Betty White, who just last month, hosted SNL at the age of 88).

I am going to spend the rest of the day watching reruns of The Golden Girls and eating cheesecake.