By Vanessa • 15 years ago

(Un)Feminist Guilty Pleasures: Daytime Soap Operas


From the age of a wee toddler, my grandmother would watch Jessica and I every day while our parents worked. And how she loved “her shows,” her favorite being All My Children.
Perhaps I watch it partly as a silly way to still feel connected to her (she passed away some years ago), although I’ll willingly admit that I’m also just simply addicted to the absurdity of it all. Either way, following a daytime soap comes with its feminist guilt; many soaps perpetuate sexist stereotypes to the extremes – AMC has the glamorous yet highly dramatic Erica Kane as well as the aggressive and money-greedy Adam Chandler. (And let’s not even get into the race and class dynamics.)
But I will say that out of all daytime soaps, AMC is actually not all bad. It’s the first daytime show to have a contracted gay character, Erica Kane’s daughter Bianca, who came out on the show in 2000. And last year, they introduced daytime’s first transgendered character, in which the producers brought in GLAAD and other trans folk to consult them on shaping the role.
And today, they’re featuring daytime TV’s first lesbian wedding between Bianca and her partner. GLAAD released a statement applauding the show for the wedding – although this doesn’t come without its soap drama, which is included in AMC’s video on today’s episode after the jump.

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