I am a pop-culture addict

Well, duh.  Really.

But I am.  Take that as you will.

Part of that, however, involves me watching (and often re-watching) some of my favorite shows w/ a feminist/womanist lens.  Sometimes I find things that I am appalled that I used to love, and sometimes I find things that I used to love, but can finally nail why.

Roseanne is one of the latter.

The series was not unproblematic, certainly.  I haven’t re-watched enough of it to give a thorough analysis.  I do find, however, that it was incredibly ahead of it’s time in many ways.  It is the first show which I remember seeing homosexuality portrayed in a positive manner.  It is the first show that really dealt w/ the working class in the Midwest (something that I related to) and the issues that surrounded them.  It is the first show I remember that tackled the subject of the cycle of abuse and breaking it.  It tackled menstruation, teen pregnancy, abortion, and countless other things that I do not remember being addressed before head on and frankly.  It had many feminist themes, and portrayed them positively.

I was home resting the other day, and when I am that special kind of tired that overtakes my whole being I need to do something to distract my brain, which never seems to be tired when my body is.  I happened to catch the series finale of Roseanne.  I have watched almost the whole series over the years, but had never seen the final episode.  As I have mentioned before I am one of those people who will get all blubby over something on a television show that hits home w/ me.

This final scene is one of those moments.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClYXawhs3lk]

and

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2XkSabKMEo&NR=1]

I am still trying to find transcripts (which I am not good at yet) that don’t require me to transcribe (which I AM good at but loathe after doing it for years).  If you have one, please drop a link in comments.

In this final scene Roseanne reveals that some of the things we watched happen over the years didn’t really happen, that it was part of a book she was writing.

The part that struck me the most is the part about how as parents we should strive to make the lives of our children at least 50% better than our own, and how she and her husband accomplished that.  She tells us that she and Dan decided to not hit their children like they were hit (something I relate to).  She tells us that they never demanded unquestioning silence from their children (something we work hard to do).  She tells us that they never taught their daughters to sacrifice more than their sons, but rather taught each child to have their own voice and to make their own choices (one of the most important lessons I think I can apply to parenting).  To be who they were unapologetically.  

Something else that struck me, and having grown up the way I did it started the waves of blubbing all over again, was when she spoke about being a “modern housewife”.  She said she walked a fine line b/t what was traditional and being true to herself.  She said that she was sure she had failed by some outsider’s perspective or another.

And that was key.

For those of us who are applying feminist/womanist values to parenting I think this is an important line (as important as a line from pop-culture can be).  We walk a line b/t what the world views a good parent to be and what we hold to be important.  The lessons of tolerance and open mindedness, of equality and appreciation, and of the Bill & Ted Mantra that I behold are forefront here.  We try to teach our children to love and respect people different than ourselves, not in spite of them being different, but often b/c of those differences.  We try to teach them to see past racial, gender, able bodied, sexual orientation divides to the heart of people.  Above all we try to teach them to find their voice and that they are people, not only young people but future adults.  The main theme of parenting that I try to stick to is that this small person is a potential adult who will need to be able to think for herself and learn how to find her own voice.  Part of that is realizing that her full potential has nothing to do w/ what is under her clothes and in her underpants or the make up of her chromosomes.

And by some people’s measure we fail.  Some will look at us and criticize us for not spanking a child.  Some will look at us and think that we are emotionally abusing our sons by not making them puppets of society’s expectations of manliness, that teaching equality is somehow harmful.  Some will call us perverts for teaching them that gender identity and sexual orientation are part of the gamut of human possibility.  Some will tell us that we are sexualizing our daughters by helping them to feel confident in who they are and helping them realize that they are complex people.  Some will tell us that we are robbing them of innocence b/c we choose to give them factual information about their bodies while teaching them that some feelings are perfectly normal.  And each and every one of these people are simply spectators, they are outsiders.  I have to wonder if we don’t give too much credence to the opinion of these outsiders and their armchair parenting.  We are preparing children to be adults and preparing them w/ the best knowledge that we can while holding dear ideals that make them compassionate and socially minded people.  We are loving them in the best way that we know how.  By teaching them simply to think for themselves and to be excellent to each other.  An outsider can not fully understand that, not enough to judge our failure or success.

I am going to end this post by applying something else from pop-culture that I think fits here.  By applying feminist/womanist ideals to my parenting, I believe that I am preparing The Kid for the world, for when she is no longer sheltered in our loving nest.  I don’t want to protect her from the world, I want to show it to her (5,000 point arbitrary “you rock” reference).

That is the best I can do.