Feminist Television: Bones

When was the last time you saw a feminist television show that features a female lead character who is intelligent, independent, strong and accomplished, yet at the same time is also compassionate and caring, able to cry and wants social justice? If you’re like me, you probably haven’t seen any in recent times, and so it was surprising for me to, as an accident, pick up a DVD of the television series "Bones," a few weeks ago at Blockbuster, and now, I am hooked. I wanted to share with you how awesome this show is.

The lead character is a cultural anthropologist who works alongside the FBI to solve crimes by examining bones of the remains of victims. Like other shows, this show involves a series of investigations in which, at the end, the murderer is caught.

Yet, that’s where the similarities end. Just as this show features a powerful woman as a lead character, the boss is also a woman – an African-American woman at that. While the show does not attempt to be politically correct, it does bring a diversity of people in leading/powerful positions. Below are also a series of other reasons the show is feminist.

1) The lead character is an educated, intelligent woman who is a martial artist and who is independent.

2) The show attempts to take on issues like date rape, the Girls Gone Wild culture, women’s economic disadvantages and the lives of sex workers.

3) Although she’s never referred to herself as a feminist, other characters on the show have referred to the lead characer as "a feminist crusader out to ruin all-American fun."

4) It’s the only show where the words "misogyny" and "objectification of women" were uttered.

5) Although the lead character views marriage as an archaic practice that define gender roles, she also dates and falls in love. Likewise, while she does fall in love, the lead character views sex as a biological need and urge that everyone has and has nothing to do with love.

6) In an episode about children beauty pageants, the lead character wonders why parents have to "prematurely sexualize their children" instead of teaching them they do not need to alter their bodies to be loved.

7) In another episode, when the newscaster referred to one of the dead victims as "among others," the lead chacteracter went a rant, asking if that’s all the victim was to the media, was merely "an other."

8) The show depicts the lives of sex workers through the feminist lens, one particular scene shows a prostitute being shocked that a man just wanted to pay her money to talk to her rather than use her body. In another, the prostitute says she and everyone she works with uses different names and dreams of different careers to escape the reality of sex work.

9) Taking on a fictitious producer of a show similar to Girls Gone Wild, the lead character charges that the man sees women not as humans, but objects.

I could go on and on, but I’d rather let you see it. Great show. And one you can make a drinking game out of. By the end of every episode, I can promise you’ll be pretty sit faced if you take a shot everytime someone says something feminist. It’s refreshing. Thoughts of the show for those who have seen it, or any other suggestions of feminist shows?