Bathroom Realism and the Women of Cable TV
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2228698 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Susan Fraiman (0000-0002-1833-125X, University of Virginia, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 589-611 |
| Publication date | 2022-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0097-9740 • E-ISSN: 1545-6943 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/717698 |
| OpenAlex | W4214689464 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 19 |
Taking as case studies three women-centered cable TV shows, this essay aims to renegotiate the terms of realism along feminist lines. In their focus on the ordinary and domestic, on proximate bodies and intimate conversations, Broad City, Insecure, and Girls echo the quotidian concerns of the nineteenth-century realist novel. Beyond this, in their signature use of the bathroom, they echo late Victorian efforts to push past the accepted limits of the “real” to explore matters conventionally hidden and beneath consideration. Abbi Jacobson, Ilana Glazer, Issa Rae, and Lena Dunham turn for reality effects to the “ugly” and typically unseen aspects of women’s daily lives: objects from tampons to toilets, shameful bodily functions, imperfect and vulnerable bodies, confused and embarrassing feelings. While all three shows exemplify a women-centered bathroom realism (in contrast to male-centered works for which violence is the key to a grittier realism), their particular strategies are differentiated by race. Jacobson, Glazer, and Dunham give us white women sprawled on toilets and tubs, trashing the ideal of proper ladyness. Rae’s bathroom fixture of choice is a mirror, a device she uses to explore the neglected terrain of Black female interiority
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Feeling · Ideal (ethics · Male gaze · Media studies · Realism · Reality television · Sociology · Visual arts · Cinema and Media Studies · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Gender Studies · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · South Asian Cinema and Culture
City of Quartz
The Ideas in Things
Tearoom Trade
Homographesis
Queer London
Olive Kitteridge (Lisa Cholodenko, 2014), quality television and difficult women
The “smart” body politics of Lena Dunham’s Girls
Sorority flow
Women’s indie television
Inter(acting)
Ladies and gents
Shame TV
Bathroom Doors and Drinking Fountains
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |