I love Charmed. I am absolutely obsessed with everything that it stands for and I will forever be in love with it despite the horrible acting, cheesy special effects, and over the top writing. I watched Charmed the evenings that my mom was out of town and my dad had to pick me up from my grandparents house. I sat there entranced with these three women who were essentially the most powerful women in the world and were using their power to fight evil and save the world, all under the noses of mortals.
Here I am almost 15 years later, still watching these shows loving every second of it and actively fighting people who tease me because of it. Why would I defend such a hokey, campy show about three witches? It’s so dorky!
It’s because I believe in the things that these women fight for and I understand the struggles that they go through on a regular basis because they’re still relevant and they’re still important. Phoebe, the empath and the lover and free spirit struggles to be taken seriously in her job because she’s constantly objectified as a sexual object. Paige, the youngest, struggles with her destiny, figuring out who she is and what her purpose is. The one I relate to the most is Piper, the most logical of the three, who is struggling to keep her job, her family, and her magic life separate.
These women are all encountering demons that are not always necessarily demonic. In Season 6, Piper loses her husband Leo to a higher power. He becomes promoted essentially to a league of angels who decide on difficult decisions and she has to deal with the difficulties of raising a powerful, magical baby on her own. This is pretty similar actions that military wives have to go through, wondering when their husbands will come back, if they come back at all.
Another reason that this show just really sells it to me is that their femininity is never construed as weakness. All of these women are beautiful and sexual, because…well…they’re women. While they are all these things, they’re also so insanely powerful. Phoebe, who doesn’t have a real physical power, trained to defend herself in the dangerous situations she’s usually put in. Piper develops the power to essentially speed molecules up (as opposed to her original power of slowing them down) to blow things up. Paige is ruthless and savage when she fights, and most of the time she ends it with a quirky quip when it’s all over and done. These women take on leagues of evil men (and a handfull of evil women) throughout the course of the show and it’s just so very important to see women doing these things.
Shows like this don’t happen anymore. During this time, we had Sailor Moon, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Totally Spies, Powerpuff Girls, the reboot of Charlie’s Angels, and Xena the Warrior Princess. Now we have…what do we have? We currently have Agent Carter and what else? We’re going to have Supergirl but I honestly cannot think of a show that shows women depicting power in a superhuman sense.
I think these shows are important. The slight tilt of imagination makes our human brain think “oh this isn’t real life, but it’s still fun” but it’s still able to inject the important things that matter into it, like depicting human conflict or subtle feminist ideals. Let’s take Season 7 Episode 2 for example:
Phoebe fights for Piper to have the ability to breast feed in public. This episode aired in 2004. Fast forward literally nine years later to when Alyssa Milano (the actress who plays Phoebe) gets flack for sharing pictures of her breast feeding her daughter on social media.
Injecting these arguments into a show that also contains a little bit of fantasy makes it easier to digest and interpret the reality. Portraying women with fake powers on tv may make it okay to accept women with real power in real life. Physically seeing women in power is important because then we will accept women in power in society.
Point of the matter is this: It’s 2015 and there’s less powerful women on TV now than there were in the early 2000s. Why do you think that is?
If you can think of any recent TV shows that have powerful women as the protagonist, I would love to know in the comments! 🙂
Super Heroine Addiction 