Oh, It’s Tuesday: Where Have All the Smart Teen Girls Gone?
Did anyone else catch NO ORDINARY FAMILY last week? The premise of a family that unexpectedly gets super powers is great. And I also liked that the husband and wife are having problems. [FIRST EPISODE SPOILERS AHEAD]
However, the depiction of the teenage daughter really bothered me. She was just so stereotypical. Good girl trying to hold on to her overly precious virginity? Check. Has a bad relationship with her successful working mom? Check. Slut-shames another girl in her very first high school scene? Check. Is pitted against other high school girls, all of whom seem to want to steal her boyfriend? Check.
Kudos for actually putting her on the girl’s basketball team – though neither of her parents show up for her basketball game, and this doesn’t seem to be an issue. Also she ends up getting the rather safe mind-reading power, as opposed to something like super-strength or intelligence, because we wouldn’t want her to be too aggressive or too smart, now would we?
I care 0% for this character, and I can already tell she is going to make this show a very hard to watch. Moreover along with MODERN FAMILY, I’m concerned about the dearth of interesting high school girls on television. Having had DARIA when I was in high school and college, I worry that all depictions of teenage girls on tv seem to fall squarely into pretty, virtuous, or teen mom with not a lot of in-between. What say you?
Hope you wern’t watching MY GENERATION. That got the ax! Too bad their ads are still up all over the place.
Yeah, that wasn’t on my list on shows I wanted to watch, despite the fact that there ads are EVERYWHERE here in LA.
I used to read a blog where the author was obsessed with Veronica Mars, (though I never watched the show)–does that count?
Ghostworld set the bar for media depiction of high school girls. Love to see those characters in a TVseries that focused on them during grades 8-11.
I adored VERONICA MARS and like many a blogger still lament its passing. So unfair.