(or how Emma Peel made me the woman I am today)
There is a lot of fun to be made at the expense of 70s television heroines but there is also a lot to be said for the influence they had on my generation of women and those who came after. There's a famous encounter that Nichelle Nicholls had with Martin Luther King that epitomizes what I mean. "During the first year of the series, Nichols was tempted to leave the show, as she wanted to pursue a Broadway career; however, a conversation with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., changed her mind. She has said that King personally encouraged her to stay on the show, telling her that he was a big fan of the series. He said she "could not give up" because she was playing a vital role model for black children and young women across the country, as well as for other children who would see African Americans appearing as equals.[5][6][7] It is also often reported that Dr. King added that "Once that door is opened by someone, no one else can close it again." In this role that today seems rather unimportant, she was making a huge difference to the kids who watched.
I know for myself the shows I watched with female characters I admired impacted my view of where I could stand in the world. When I was 3 I watched The Avengers repeats with my grandparents. I so wanted to grow up to be Emma Peel. She was beautiful yes, but also strong, intelligent and didn't always need to be rescued.
...and face it girl could rock a cat suit.
She was in fact kind of the brawn of the duo, Steed definitely didnt like to get his hands dirty. I got my first pair of black knee high boots at this age, which I of course called my Emma Peel boots. I have no doubt the obsession I have with boots to this day (and perhaps my penchant for leather as well) started with Emma but perhaps so did my aspirations to be a badass. She was my female ideal as a toddler and frankly she still pretty much is.
I've gone on ad nauseum on my various blogs about my Dad's influence on me but his taste in female characters also played into my view of who I could be as a woman. His favorite show when I was little was "Get Christie Love". I didn't watch it when it was on since I was so little but I made it a point to watch later when they repeated it because my Dad loved her so much.
He definitely liked strong women who could take care of themselves and Christie was one. She was way cooler and more badass than Police Woman (although that show lasted far longer and Angie Dickinson did her bit for tough women there as well). As an adult I discovered how Christie Love was the toned down TV version of Blaxploitation heroines like Coffey and Cleopatra Jones which are two of my favorite films.
Then we get to the somewhat controversial choice of Charlie's Angels. Yes, it was a T & A fest and probably created more for that than female empowerment, but when I watched Sabrina, Kelly and Kris (or Jill when it was Farrah) I wasn't really thinking about their skimpy clothes or how beautiful they were. I was focused on the fact that they always got the bad guy.
I'm sure we could go on about body image and ideals of beauty when talking about the Angels but honestly when I was on the playground playing Charlie's Angels I wasn't laying around pretending I was in a bikini. I was chasing the boys around with my imaginary gun because they were criminals who needed to be arrested, and yes those boys ran. They knew my justice was swift and unyielding.
There's no denying that things are different now and most of these women don't come off as anything close to empowering to a modern day girl but this was a different time and women were just carving out new places for themselves. A little girl had nothing but possibilities ahead of her and it was important to have these non-traditional women to look to for ideas of who she wanted to be. Maybe most women still ended up looking to more traditional women for inspiration but for me these women made me want to grow up to be strong, self sufficient while still decidely female and for that I thank them.
