''Don't Ask me, I'm Just a Girl'': Feminism, Female Identity, and The ...

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Don’t Ask me, I’m Just a Girl 291 encapsulates the gender politics of popular culture in the postwar era: ‘‘I’m drawing a line down the center of the house, à la I Love Lucy. You stay on your side and I’ll stay on my side.’’ A short time later, we discover that Hermann, one of Homer’s poker buddies, is running a counterfeit jeans operation out of Homer’s garage. Homer quite literally stumbles upon this information while in search of more beer; Marge, being ever vigilant, is already one step ahead, and she arrives a moment later to arrest the criminals gathered in the garage. Homer, enacting his expected role as male ‘‘hero,’’ steps between Marge and Hermann and yells ‘‘Leave the girl out of this,’’ but he is inept in this role and is captured by Hermann. Marge is thus thrust into the position of being the hero and saving the day. What follows is a dramatic chase sequence in which the contradictory messages about female identity and women’s ‘‘proper place’’ are very curiously combined. Marge chases Hermann into the Simpsons’ back yard and then up a tree to Bart’s treehouse. As she climbs, we see Bart and Lisa in the background cheering her on from the second-floor bedroom window. Marge pauses momentarily and admonishes them to ‘‘Get back to bed!’’; ‘‘Don’t make me come up there!’’ she warns. After she has successfully captured the criminal, Homer admits that Marge is a good cop and that he is proud of her. However, as in ‘‘Homer Alone,’’ this somewhat progressive ending is placed in check with a quick denouement that returns the characters to their ‘‘normal’’ state: when Marge sees all of the other cops trying on the contraband jeans, she asserts ‘‘There’s too much corruption on this force,’’ and she quits. Once again, the show ends on a rather ambiguous note, highlighting its ambivalence about feminism and female identity in the 1990s. Although the episode returns the characters to their traditionally dichotomized gender roles and separate spheres, it also makes abundantly clear in the process that a female in a traditionally male-dominated profession is not only capable of performing all of the duties of the job, but is at times even better at it than those who are considered the ‘‘appropriate’’ jobholders. This seems to be a particularly powerful statement in an era in which women nationwide have been challenging the exclusionary practices of police and fire departments, as well as the military. Nonetheless, The Simpsons leaves Marge positioned in a liminal space, and she remains in many ways the embodiment of the cultural contradictions of contemporary femininity. A much clearer stance is evident in Lisa Simpson, who is positioned quite strongly as a
292 Matthew Henry young feminist, one more in the second-wave mold than her mother, and there is little ambiguity about where she stands, what she believes, and what she represents. Lisa Simpson By its fifth season, which began in the fall of 1993, The Simpsons had hit its stride and was receiving enormous amounts of press coverage, both positive and negative, due to the ‘‘bad-boy’’ antics of Bart Simpson and, increasingly, of Homer. Significantly, however, by the end of that season, in the spring of 1994, it was the Simpson women who were making a name for themselves within the culture at large and who were standing out more dramatically than the Simpson men. In honor of Mother’s Day that year, for example, Entertainment Weekly, the newly established arbiter of popular cultural tastes, ranked television’s moms and named Marge Simpson as ‘‘the best,’’ praising her for being ‘‘at once progressive and traditional’’ (Tucker, ‘‘Yea, Mamas’’ 68). More significantly, later that same year, Lisa Simpson appeared in an issue of Ms. magazine, alongside notable feminist activists such as Gloria Anzaldúa and Bella Abzug, in a section called ‘‘The Many Faces of Feminism.’’ In the article, the editors of Ms. magazine claim that Lisa ‘‘wages a one-girl revolution against cartoonland patriarchy’’ (48). This is true, but it is important to point out that Lisa’s activism is not really relegated to cartoonland—it is actually a part of our land, i.e., the United States—and her concerns transcend the narrow confines of the animation cel or the television screen. It is perhaps no surprise that Lisa appeared in the Ms. magazine spread in 1994 when one considers that her battle against patriarchy and sexism was quite powerfully demonstrated in an episode that aired the very same year. ‘‘Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy’’ (#1F12), which first aired in February of 1994, provides what is perhaps the most overt critique of sexism and patriarchy to ever appear in an episode of The Simpsons. In this episode, Lisa is excited about acquiring the new ‘‘Talking Malibu Stacy’’ doll and thus flocks to the mall with the other excited consumers to purchase one on the day of its release. In a section of the store appropriately named The Valley of the Dolls, Lisa warns her mother ‘‘I may get a little crazy, Mom.’’ Before Marge can even finish acknowledging her understanding, Lisa is wrestling another little girl for a ‘‘Summer Fun
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