Liz Lemon-ism, “TGS Hates Women,” and The Everywoman Myth

Tina Fey is the Hillary Rodham Clinton of American comedy.

Fey’s taken a big swipe at her industry’s glass ceiling with 30 Rock, and also with her work on SNL and Mean Girls, though not so much a flying leap upwards as the methodical building of a ladder.  Much like Clinton, Fey’s ladder has led her to become the premier female decision-maker in her field; Fey is the grande dame of mainstream comedy as Clinton is…um, Secretary of State.

However, neither Fey nor Clinton are universally beloved by women.  Last year, a widely circulated post on the blog Tiger Beatdown titled “13 Ways of Looking At Liz Lemon” characterized 30 Rock’s target audience using language that might also describe the second-wave-feminist rock of support (Tiger calls it “Liz Lemon-ism”) beneath Clinton:

“…a certain variety of white, coastal-city dwelling, fairly well-to-do heterosexual cisgendered woman, a woman with a comfortable white-collar job that is so very comfortable and so very white-collar that she is free to spend her spare time yearning for, and semi-believing that she could attain, something with more “meaning”…she can tell you that as a feminist she has a right to be Concerned About Porn; she’s Brooklyn not Queens, brunch not breakfast, flirty not slutty, fond of cupcakes and feminist theory but unsure how to make either one herself, and thoroughly incensed about Vajazzling.”

In light of “13 Ways” and other similar criticism, it was hard not to read a note of reflection into last week’s episode of 30 Rock, “TGS Hates Women.” In the episode, Liz hires another woman writer after being accused of sexism by a feminist blog called JoanofSnark.com. After discovering that the writer, Abby, acts like a living, breathing inflatable sex doll, Liz launches a bizarre feminist enlightenment campaign on her, leaking a video of Abby pre-porno-transformation onto the web.  Inevitably, the joke is on Liz, who learns too late that Abby took on a new identity (perhaps she was modeling herself after Holly Madison or this Wikipedia entry of “A high end sex doll”) to escape an abusive ex-husband.

The intersection that is illuminated between “13 Ways” and “TGS Hates Women” is Fey’s (and Clinton’s) inability to fill the ‘Everywoman’ role.  It’s an impossible expectation to be asked to speak for an entire demographic just because you’re the only representative in power. It is as unreasonable as asking Barack Obama to account for all of black America (especially considering his, um, white mom).  Standard-bearers like Fey and Clinton-who probably never would have achieved their popular success if they were any less educated, privileged, or moderate-are lionized and aspired to by women who identify with them, but equally ridiculed and dismissed by those whom they fail to represent.  Some people love them for widening the public lens to include any women at all.  Others yearn for female role models farther outside the current mainstream including, but not limited to, women of color, queer women, poor women, disabled women, or women who are actually fat, rather than fictitiously insinuating that they are on their major network sitcom.  Liz Lemon is not every woman.

“TGS Hates Women” could be interpreted—indeed, I am interpreting it—as a direct response to the Tiger Beatdown brand of critique of Liz Lemon and her –ism.  Instead of giving us another week of Lemon’s usual attempts to corral the various dysfunctional men in her life, with “TGS Hates Women,” 30 Rock shifts the lens of criticism onto Lemon’s own character in a manner that’s predictably self-loathing but refreshingly self-aware.  Lemon herself becomes an incarnation of the incensed critic, the one unwilling to accept the model of female power—in this case, Abby—offered to her.

It’s a clever subversion that Fey performs.  In response to critics who, with more than a dash of self-righteousness and condescension, deride her or Lemon for being too moderate, Fey sets Lemon up to fall under the guillotine of her own self-righteousness. Fey radicalizes herself and returns a jab at the “you’re-not-feminist-enough-ers” all with one fell swoop of humiliation.

Through Lemon, Fey also owns up to an ugly but familiar kind of woman-on-woman crime: the snarky, guilt-driven jabs those of us who like to think we’ve made it into the room lob at those who haven’t, or even the Abbys who have.  Women have a lot of reasons to be competitive. There’s still less room for women at the top of virtually every profession, we don’t want to be inseminated by no fool, or as Jack points out, “Female jealousy is an evolutionary fact, Lemon. If you try to breed it out of them, you end up with a lesbian with hip dysplasia.” However, it’s the assumption that there’s only one model of female power that proves dangerously conducive to this kind of woman-on-woman crime.

Finally, the myth of Fey/Lemon’s ugliness, like Hillary Clinton’s job title, is a blog post or book unto itself. Before “TGS Hates Women,” I’ve often wondered if Tina Fey honestly believed she wasn’t a total Betty.  But when 30 Rock executes a witty, ironic, and typically self-deprecating exposition of the assumption that women can’t be simultaneously successful and sexual, I’m tempted to read it as a sly wink on Fey’s part.  She’s debunking the myth that attractive women—like herself (she must know by now)—can’t be anything but ambitious gold-diggers succumbing to patriarchal pressure to be booby and desirable.  It’s an affirmation that 30 Rock and its show-within-the-show, “TGS,” are engaging in a discussion generated and perpetuated by women, and a recognition on Fey’s part that she doesn’t speak for all women, and when she tries, she ends up with egg on her face.

Leaders like Fey and Clinton are not radical models of success; women in power are still too rare, but no longer unheard of.  Their purpose is to push the center farther left, not to throw it off the charts.  Appreciation for the progress they’ve made comes in many different forms—abject worship and incensed critique alike—but we owe it to them all the same, if for no other reason than jokes like “We should at least be elevating women — ohhh, my period! You’re all fired!” just wouldn’t be funny without them.