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Cautionary tales of liberation and female professionalism: The case against Ally McBeal

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 69; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10570310500076890

1745-1027

Michele Hammers,

Media Studies and Communication

Abstract This paper explores the relationship between female professional identity and cultural associations between femininity and the body, emotion and sexuality. The intersection(s) of existing professional discourses with social and theoretical discourses of the body render recent postfeminist and third‐wave feminist discourses, especially as they have been deployed and co‐opted by the media, particularly problematic for women professionals. Against this complex theoretical and social background the television series, Ally McBeal, as exemplified by the episode 'It's My Party', operates as a useful case study of the dangers that the co‐optation of contemporary feminist discourse(s) poses for professional women. Keywords: Media StudiesFeminismProfessional DiscourseFemale BodyAlly McBeal Notes This paper was presented at the 2002 meeting of the Western States Communication Association as part of a competitively selected panel sponsored by the Media Studies Interest Group. In addition to acknowledging the support of the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University, the author wishes to thank Daniel C. Brouwer, Rochelle Rodrigo, and three anonymous reviewers for their comments and advice concerning this piece. The 'FX' website also includes an active message board where fans continue to discuss the series. According to Malloy, overt attractiveness is not just a problem because it has associations with being an intellectual 'light‐weight'. In addition, an overly attractive/feminine appearance for a woman implicates another problematic discourse—that of sex: A woman has to walk a very narrow line. If she sends signals that are so feminine that they are read as sexual, it has [a negative] effect. This surprises most women, but sexual signals in an office setting, while seeming to please most men, do not. Most men are either annoyed or intimidated by women in the office who dress for sex. (Malloy, Citation1996, p. 66) In Malloy's advice, we see evidence of the slippage that occurs between the meaning of the female body as a sign of both incompetence and of potentially dangerous sexual difference simultaneously (see also Trethewey, Citation1999). Notably, Ally is not the only one of the women lawyers on the series to adopt this careerist sexuality at one time or another. Nell, Ling and Renee all have been featured in storylines that revolved around their use of their sex appeal to gain a professional advantage over a male colleague. For example, in one episode Nell uses her attractiveness to manipulate a male IRS agent into giving her the legal concessions that she wanted for her client. Nell apparently is repulsed by this course of action, but values winning enough to utilize this questionable strategy anyway. The ease by which particular deployments of female sexuality can be co‐opted by masculinist discourse, can be understood in light of Foucault's (Citation1990) warning that: 'We must not think that by saying yes to sex, one says no to power; on the contrary, one tracks along the course laid out by the general deployment of sexuality' (p. 157). According to Foucault, within the context of the existing historical formation—replete as it is with the power formations that continue to deploy sexuality for social‐political purposes—saying yes to 'sex' is not a method of liberation (1990, p. 158). Saying yes to sex merely places one in a particular position within the matrices of power that are coextensive with sexuality. However, when women lay claim to particular sexual behaviors or attitudes as defying or subverting traditional patriarchal or repressive standards, one can question whether they are not merely reinforcing the power relations that originally labeled those behaviors and attitudes in the first place. An emphasis on sex as a weapon for women to use in their struggle against social repression falls into the trap set by the emergence of our historical fascination with sex, which is to ignore the fact that sex and sexuality are constructed and necessarily operate within a larger power matrix (Bordo, Citation1995, pp. 26–27; Foucault, Citation1990, p. 155). Thus, from a Foucaultian perspective, an emphasis on sex, or on particular manifestations of 'sexuality,' will not necessarily free women from the social‐political inequalities that the gender hierarchy has come to impose. Instead, the utilization of sex or sexuality as sources of female empowerment may, in fact, have an ambivalent relationship with the broader discourses within which female‐gendered identities are constructed and deployed (Bordo, Citation1995, pp. 28–31). Additional informationNotes on contributorsMichele L. Hammers Footnote This paper was presented at the 2002 meeting of the Western States Communication Association as part of a competitively selected panel sponsored by the Media Studies Interest Group. In addition to acknowledging the support of the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University, the author wishes to thank Daniel C. Brouwer, Rochelle Rodrigo, and three anonymous reviewers for their comments and advice concerning this piece.