Have you heard about the new shows "Don't Trust the B in Apartment 23" and "GCB?" There's two things they have in common. They are news shows on ABC and they have "bitch" in the title.
You know, there's something really different feeling about the way Bitch Magazine uses the "B word" and the way that these shows are doing it. While Bitch Magazine feels revolutionary and reclaimatory, the stuff ABC is peddling feels tried and borderline offensive.
Like really? We're still calling women bitches? And it's so routine that it's in the title of television shows now?
Sigh.
I don't typically trust Yahoo News to be a bastion of feminist news, but they really hit the nail on the head in their interview with Andi Zeisler:
"It's very clear that she's actually a sociopath," says Andi Zeisler, co-founder and editorial director of Bitch Magazine. "It's not like here's a strong, confident woman and she's head bitch in charge. She's actually a sociopath and she treats people horribly."
The B-word was rarely heard on TV when Bitch Magazine began in 1996. Founders of the feminist pop-culture magazine "were reacting to the idea of bitch as this go-to gendered insult in a world of very feasible and accessible gender-neutral ways of saying you don't like what someone is doing," Zeisler said.
ABC is using the term the old-fashioned way.
"Their intention was never to really reclaim the word," she said. "Television shows ultimately want to be apolitical. They don't want to engage with the kinds of rhetoric that in real life translates into incredibly ugly reminders that these judgments are still really powerful and really commonplace."
Because the insult is abbreviated, it "kind of defangs what's supposed to be edgy" about the shows, she said, and the B-titles end up looking like a "blatant grab at relevance."I totally agree and I couldn't help but eye roll when I saw promos for these two shows. It's just very confusing to me how we seem to be stuck in a continuous state where this type of language is acceptable, when it's delivered in a passive, nonexamined way. Like I said, it's just different when a woman-driven, feminist voice is using the b-word than when big network TV is.
I agree with your overall point that using "bitch" in these show titles was lazy and derivative. However, it's not clear that the character played by Krysten Ritter in "Don't Trust the B in Apt. 23" is a sociopath, as Andi Zeisler alleges. Although the character's actions may be anti-social, some of her motivations are well-intentioned. It appears that she truly wants her roommate to have the good life she deserves. She just doesn't act ethically in her attempts to make that happen.
ReplyDeleteHi there-I haven't seen the show yet to be fair, but I've actually heard good things. That wasn't my favorite part of the quote, but I think that overall, her message is good.
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