The Feminist Case for Loving ‘Charlie’s Angels’

I don’t remember how old I was when I first heard the term “jiggle TV,” but I know it was many years (decades, probably) after I was a devoted, starry-eyed fangirl of the genre. And I do mean girl—Wonder Woman (1975-79) came into the world just a year after I did, Charlie’s Angels (1976-81) two years after, Three’s Company (1977-84) the year after that. This timing meant that I watched them all—first in weekly nighttime installments, later in endlessly imbibable reruns—as I was learning to walk, talk, dress, eat, interact with other girls and other boys, and understand how the world saw me and where I fit into it. The term “jiggle TV” was coined in the mid-1970s by NBC exec Paul Klein to describe and deride rival network ABC’s successful lineup of shows starring women who wore excessively revealing clothing, with Charlie’s Angels as its prime example. Whatever age I was when I first heard the term, I was old enough to immediately grasp its demeaning, objectifying implications. I remember it hitting me like a ton of bricks: The fictional world I’d been gazing at with such awe and reverence was, in the eyes of others, somewhere between a turn-on and a joke. Still, Wonder Woman and Charlie’s Angels were the stuff my dreams were made of. No one seemed more majestically beautiful to me on this planet than Lynda Carter, and I spent many an hour in my beloved Wonder Woman underoos, wrist-repelling invisible bullets and careening around in my invisible jet. Without making a big thing about it, I tucked my childhood obsession away in a remote-storage corner of my brain and, for decades, lived an Angels-free life. Until this year, when Charlie's Angels turned the big 5-0. I decided to attempt a full-series rewatch. I wanted to see if immersing myself in the series again after all these years would pull my memories out of remote storage and give me a more detailed picture of how the show’s storylines and messages had affected my pliable young mind. What had I picked up and taken away from the show besides starry-eyed fangirl devotion? The answer was: plenty. The post The Feminist Case for Loving ‘Charlie’s Angels’ appeared first on Ms. Magazine.