Women in the Media

Women In Media since the '60's. How Things Have Changed.

What little television I watched as a child was so engaging that I felt I was apart of the show. Now those memories of television past are like a walk down history. Star Trek was the highlight of the week as we watched Uhura tell everyone “we’re being hailed”, Nurse Chapel waited for Spock to ask her to dinner, and Kirk tried to seduce the woman of the week, one of whom was Joan Collins, who years later caught my attention again on Dynasty with Diahann Carroll as Blake Carrington’s half sister. This took me away from the evening news that scared me worse than the appearances of a Balok or a Talosian ever did as a child.

As an only child I watched a lot of TV by myself, except for Sci-fi. My mother and I watched those together, but the one that has stayed with me and kept my attention for a lifetime is Trek. Gene Roddenberry had a vision that I admired and now share, but Uhura was a woman I admired most. When I was not watching TV my best friend and I would argue over who would play Uhura, even on the school playground. It did not matter to us that Uhura was Black and we were White, because Trek was the one show that consumed us next to Charlie’s Angels and Wonder Woman. We could not wait to get together and play Star Trek.

In the mist of seeing bras and draft cards burning and bussing on the news, Trek was an escape from all the every day violence. It had violence, but it was different from the day to day civil unrest we usually saw on the news and it gave hope for a future that was different. It was a world where everyone- Black, White, Russian, male, female, and alien got along with each other. The Klingons on the Starboard bough were troublesome, in which Uhura later shouted in a Dr. Demento song “Peel them off, Jim!”

Still, Nichelle Nichols was admirable to me as a little girl for many reasons, but in some respects I was like Whoopi Goldberg, who also watched Star Trek as a child. It really was the first time you saw “a Black lady on TV and she ain’t no maid!” as Whoopi said. Nichelle and other women started to do things that women did not do before and they started stretching the limits of what women would do in the future. It was a completely new world for women and it went beyond Barbara Walters reporting about bra burning and the ERA. Nichelle Nichols was only the beginning of “Superheroes” for young women on TV, followed by Linda Carter as Wonder Woman and Lindsey Wagnor as the Bionic Woman. Still, the most esteemed, in my mind, was Nichelle because she broke through the lines of discrimination, which at the time the ERA and Civil Rights were the news of the day.

As my grandfather complained that Elvis Presley corrupted the morals of a generation and my father complained about interracial dating, the Rock Opera Hair protested the Vietnam War. Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell told the Gospel in a non-traditional manner. Yvonne Elliman sung about not knowing how to love Him shortly after Nell Carter and Melba Moore sung about how White Boys were better then Black Boys in response to Diane Keaton saying Black Boys were better. I sat back knowing not to argue with my elders, even though I did not think anything was wrong with protesting violence and dating whomever you wanted, but eventually it separated us as a family because our views were different.

It was a time of change and unrest for everyone as the evening news reported on Vietnam, bra and draft card burning, draft dodging, ERA, the KKK burning crosses on people’s lawns, cities on fire, and bussing. I would sit with my parents, and sometimes my grandparents, watching the evening news with Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters. Then one day the most disturbing pictures I can remember of my childhood interrupted the morning program I was watching. I don’t think I will ever forget the day Saigon fell amongst all the other pictures of my childhood. People were running and screaming as they rushed to get out of Saigon. As a nine year old in 1975 it frightened me more than anything I saw on TV before. It was the major story of the day and it seemed that everything in our lives changed in a flash of a moment as we silently watched the disturbing pictures flicker across the screen.

Well, times change and before long you never saw Lucky Strikes dancing or the Marlboro man sitting on a horse as you did when I was in preschool. In exchange we saw a Native American crying because someone threw trash out of a car window polluting the country-side, the United Negro College Fund said, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”, Blake Carrington unashamedly had a half sister who was half black and half white, and strong independent female characters. The 80’s had women as the seducers instead of being seduced, which was very different from Kirk seducing a woman almost every week. As an adult in the 1980’s, I saw Majel Barrett as an admirable woman who was now strong and vibrant, chasing after men instead of waiting for a man to come to her.

Women and African-Americans fought for equal rights during the 60’s and early 70’s as people protested the Vietnam War and everything burned on the news. Joan Collins and Diahann Carroll in the 80’s appeared as strong, independent women with no shame of who they were on Dynasty. The women of Trek were also stronger. Gone were days of the dependant and submissive women. Television reflected the movements of the time, helped to change the attitudes of the past, and changed how women were portrayed.