Career-minded women not totally human, sez Today
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Posted by Andi Zeisler October 5th, 2007 |
It’s been a while since I started my morning by screaming at my television, but a segment on today’s Today sent me into full-fledged flailing, eye-rolling, cursing spasms. Seriously, I think I scared my dog. The reason? Today’s report on “the rise of the fembot.”
The segment started with a clip of Grey’s Anatomy’s Christina Yang to illustrate the phenomenon of a woman who is so into her career and her independence that she’s a threat to the natural order of things — and by natural order of things, of course, we’re talking men and babies. According to Marie Claire editor Joanna Coles, one of the two experts brought on the show to discuss this terrifying phenomenon, the fembot is a woman who ” doesn’t crowd around when a coworker brings her baby into the office, doesn’t share cupcakes with her friends on her birthday,” because she just wants to get back to work. Then the interviewer—not Ann, not Matt, not Meredith, and not Al, so I don’t know who the hell she was—offered that, gee, this all seems really sad, these women with their husband-les, baby-less lives of cupcake-shunning. She turned to the show’s other designated expert, a psychologist who at least managed to make the point that being independent and focused on your career is “wonderful,” and should be differentiated from being “emotionally unavailable,” but agreed that being emotionally unavailable is a problem. And then she went on for a while about women being hard-wired to nurture, and thus not wanting to nurture is crazy abnormal. And then, I’m not joking, the interviewer said “Here’s what to look out for!” and we got a little infographic with the signs that you might be emotionally unavailable, aka a fembot, aka totally not human.
I clearly need to dredge up the video clip, or else I may believe that I hallucinated the whole thing. Did Today just try to convince us—incoherently, but still—that being absorbed in one’s career, not caring about other people’s babies, and not wanting to get all emotionally strung out in relationships makes a woman inhuman? Did anyone else see this? Anyone?
October 5th, 2007 11:46
No surprise there, though. The Today show never ever raises the bar to anything more than sharing obvious tips about housekeeping, babbling predictable arguments about things everybody knows. They really become dangerous when they actually try to pick a serious topic, like this one. I will never forget that one morning, my TV was inadvertently on this show, and they had a segment about shoes, and what you OUGHT TO KNOW before buying them. Well, the bottom line advice turned out to be that the shoe has to fit! So now there are into social issues? God help us!
October 5th, 2007 13:02
This was probably on their new fourth hour, right? That hour seems to focus on how to look beautiful and be skinny. I even saw one segment that seemed to be recommending foot surgery as a valid way to fit into uncomfortable shoes. So… what can you expect!?
October 6th, 2007 17:00
Wow, I didn’t see it, but will go look for clips on YouTube now. This crap got to be challenged. I’m so over it! I run a solutions-oriented, action-based media company focused on empowering women and youth our world, and still people I know believe it’s sad that I don’t have a man and a child to attend to. Ha!
October 6th, 2007 17:05
I just subscribed to your feed because of this post! I am career focused for the first time in my life, and I could not have imagined myself happier or healthier and I am no robot!
October 6th, 2007 17:17
http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-us&fg=rss&vid=73e42da6-7131-47d0-bc91-e3f0e3784bfe&from=05
October 8th, 2007 10:19
The surreal thing about this is, the fembot is a FICTIONAL CHARACTER!! IE, they are critiquing imaginary people– TV roles, archetypes– AS IF they are real. When clearly any breathing person is not so one-dimensional, even when she (or he) is a workaholic. By Today’s definition I am a fembot– very into my career, never very domestic or conventionally nurturing. But my friends and family will tell you I’m anything but a cold machine…Once again we are being presented with fabricated news. A trend that exists only in the media’s imagination.
Speaking of fake news, I hope Samantha Bee has fun with this one.
October 8th, 2007 11:42
I’ve been really upset in the midst of the Bionic woman publicity barrage about the fembot tag, so to hear about this coverage –especially making fictional characters somehow apply to actual people– really takes more wind from my sails. Whatever happened to real women having room to be different from one another? And can’t we love Christina Yang as she is? I am hoping she lives in total slovenly-ness again & goes back to buying new underwear rather than washing it as she did in her pre-Burke days!
October 8th, 2007 12:20
Sarah, it’s so funny that you brought up the character quirk about Christina Yang (from pre-tamed/pre-Burke Grey’s days) buying new underear rather than going to the laundry. I always capital-L LOVED that quirk because… wait for it… I’ve done that. In dollar-stores-aplenty-Brooklyn, there have definitely been times where I’ve been too busy to haul my shopping cart of dirty clothes eight blocks to the laundromat and sit there for two hours until I could haul it back home again. Easier to buy a few pairs of dollar store panties and be able to put the laundry off until the following weekend… if that makes me a “fembot,” bring it on!
October 24th, 2007 15:35
I’m still pretty young, and my career is just starting out, but it’s beginning to skyrocket. I’m always busy and don’t have time for my poor friends let alone a guy (or man. I should start saying ‘man’, because I am far beyond my teens now. Well, not far. ANYWAY), and already I’ve had people saying “BUT WHEN WILL YOU GET A BOYYYFRIEND AND GET MARRIED??”
It’s astounding!
October 24th, 2007 17:29
I personally always respected Christina, and even though I’m not that work driven, I have a lot of respect for strong women, and I’m glad that the ‘fembot,’ if that’s what career driven and independent women are now being called, are being represented on TV. The interviewer was saying how she just thought it was ’sad’ how women just didn’t want to care and they kept going on and on about how we should care. Really? Because there are days when I just don’t care about ridiculous things, but if you have a serious problem, I will be there. If someone brings his or her baby or dog or whatever into work, I’ll take some time to say hi, but it’s a waste of my time to sit around and talk about my emotions. And I seriously hope there are no girls out there who sit around and talk about if she is having her period at the same time as her friend because that’s just pathetic. I also liked how it was implied that if I didn’t sit around and cry and emote 24/7 that I had some kind of disease that made me an animal.
October 24th, 2007 18:09
What astounded me was how they also managed to slam non-career driven women. Apparently, non-fembot women are sitting around talking about whether they will get their periods all at once. Way to spread the misogyny around folks!
October 24th, 2007 19:08
I failed to see how anybody thought that little gem was at all helpful to the human race. All it seemed to do was give people external markers they could use to tag people who make choices they themselves would disdain…and then…yay!…tie it to gender.
If anybody–guy or girl–was exhibiting the cocktail of traits from their snazzy little infographic, I’d say they had narcissism combined with medium to severe depression, and they might want to seek counselling. But I wouldn’t tie it their being soulless, childless, unmarried women with careers.
Anyway, my summary is here: http://pixelfish.livejournal.com/683713.html
October 25th, 2007 09:15
I see they did not mention that men habitually, or historically, are allowed a period of emotional unavailability while they pursue their career or their dreams.
I’m not sure why anyone watches the today show anyway.
October 25th, 2007 14:23
Cooper’s spot on. That blatant, sexist double-standard is something that, as a somewhat work-a-holic man, I live every day.
Due to its time slot, the Today Show most likely believes they are playing to the stay-at-homes and that such a demographic somehow must consist exclusively of women who can’t feel empowered without heaping disdain upon their peers in the out-of-home workforce.
I’d be pissed, as well, if I were a stay-at-home dad. The Today Show would’ve just called my SO a souless machine.
March 27th, 2008 07:42
WTF? I think I’m officially no longer a Today Show watcher. I usually peek at it with my coffee but that literally turned my stomach.
Thank you Cooper. I completely agree.
October 9th, 2008 21:12
Women should be able to live whatever kind of life we want, If a down to business attitude feels like the best way to go, go along with it and don’t feel pressured to have kids right away. Husband-les, baby-less for a time is the way to see the world. Why not invest, and take part in the stock market, build an empire.
October 12th, 2008 23:52
In fact, people seem to be spending alot of time watching soap operas and emotionally roller-coater like shows. If anyone tried to live their lives like that in the real world we would have a high divorce rate and girls modeling themselves after way too skinny barbie dolls.