Chapter 12: The Runway-Ready Ringleader and Other Media Myths: An Analysis of Common Television and Film Stereotypes of Women Leaders

Decades before I became Dr. Shana Matamala, professor and director, I was a girl growing up in a small town in the 1970s—a time before Netflix and other on-demand programming sites. Watching television back then, viewers were lucky if they had six choices. The women leaders I saw portrayed included Carol Brady from The Brady Bunch (Schwartz, 1969), Daisy Duke from The Dukes of Hazard (Picard, 1979), and Marion Cunningham from Happy Days (Marshall, 1974). Did these images exert a force on my internal belief system of how I perceived myself and other women? I would say they did, but I also had the voices of my family, where I grew up, and my educational experiences to influence these perceptions. My question is: What if other girls do not have strong counter voices? What if the myths they see permeating the media remain the strongest voices? What kinds of stories do we want our girls seeing and believing about themselves?