Today I did something I had never done, or thought I would ever do. I watched about 25 minutes of the Tyra Banks show.
This strange event happened because I turned on the TV and was about to start doing a Pilates DVD with Dominic* when he grabbed the DVD remote control and started chewing it. He seemed very happy and unlikely to give the remote up without a fuss so I decided to channel graze the usually incredibly unappetising array of daytime broadcast TV.
When I flicked on TV2 Chandra Wilson was just being introduced as the guest by Tyra. Chandra has got to be one of the most awesome actresses on TV at the moment in my opinion so I started watching. For those of you who don’t know, Chandra Wilson plays the fearless Dr Bailey (formerly known as the Nazi) on Grey’s Anatomy. Bailey is probably the best female character on any TV show that I currently watch. She is relentlessly committed and skilled at her job, she stands up to anybody and knows her own mind. She cares about people and ends up helping every other neurotic and generally self-involved character on the show. A truly strong character with a real sense of humanity. Bailey is honest, intelligent, has integrity, a good heart and a sense of humour.
While the pretty, skinny female doctors are generally portrayed as ambitious and intelligent which makes them better role models than the women in many other shows, they are constantly being brought down by becoming depressed and pathetic due to the seemingly never-ending and self-made misery of their love lives. It is hard to care about beautiful, smart women who angst about the fact that they are so emotionally screwed-up that they can’t commit or have a successful relationship with the unbelievably hunky, and very patient, world class surgeons who love them.
However, when Bailey is upset or suffers, she expresses her pain or troubles but then strives to overcome it and get on with what needs to be done. This makes me sympathetic with her pain a lot more. It was heartbreaking watching her when her baby son was brought into the hospital after an accident, or struggling with the fact the she had to keep operating on a white supremacist who didn’t want to be treated by her when her marriage was falling apart. When she was talking to Dr Shepard about how she had been hurt by the hunky jock who strung her along and used her to do his homework in High School, the infamous ‘McDreamy’ faded away to being mere wallpaper.
The character Bailey owns every scene she is in, and you can’t help but respect, admire and like her. Further proof of the awesomeness of this character was shown on last night’s episode when she calmed a panicking patient down by talking to him about Han Solo and revealing an impressive knowledge of the movies and subsequent Star Wars events.
My enthusiasm for Dr Bailey is obviously pretty extreme but it just leaves me wondering why there aren’t other great female characters on other shows. Why is it so rare to see a woman on TV portrayed as strong, competent, smart and caring? I know heaps of women in real life who are these things but I struggle to think of TV female characters that aren’t weak-willed, neurotic and incompetent, or if they are competent then they tend to be callous, deceptive, selfish and/or unlikeable. I guess Zoe on Firefly was also very cool but I struggle to think of many others.
Anyway, the thing that surprised me on the Tyra Banks show was that she was doing a whole thing about body image and real women feeling proud of their real size because apparently there has been a huge nasty thing in the magazine wolrd declaring that Tyra Banks was fat. WTF?! What definition of fat does Tyra come under? Having some flesh on her skeleton? Craziness. Apparently she now weighs 161 pounds which is 30 something pounds heavier than when she was an 18 year old fashion model, but she is in her thirties and looked to be in amazing shape. It should really just be seen a sign that fashion models are way too underweight rather than an indication that Tyra has been tucking into too many cheeseburgers.
Another frightening thing was they had some woman who developed an eating disorder after having a baby. Apparently there is now some trend amongst new mums to get post-natal eating disorders when women can’t cope with the way their body has changed and the difficulty of losing the pregnancy weight. A very disturbing trend. Pregnancy and giving birth seem enough trauma for a body without then putting it through crash dieting. It really bugs me how magazines keep publishing photos of celebrities’ post-baby bodies like it is a competition to see who can get back in shape the fastest. It must be unhealthy for stars who have the resources to get nannies, personal trainers and dieticians to try to lose the weight so quickly, let alone for real world mums who can’t have such things. Just when you think the beauty/thin myth can’t get any worse, the next Child of our Time episode apparently looks at how the media negatively affects 8 year old kids and their attitudes to their own bodies.
* Dominic doesn’t do the Pilates but he likes to be held whilst I do standing up exercises, or have tummy time next to/on me when I do floor exercises. I blame Buggy Fit classes. He now wants to be involved in any and all exercises I do.
