Pfunksfoolosophy

You know, growing up I always wanted to have a swinging bachelorette apartment like the one Mary Richards had in Minneapolis. I didn’t want to live in Minneapolis and I didn’t want to be an associate producer, but I sure wanted to be able to walk into my sunken living room/bedroom and have a walk-in closet/powder room. She had a swingin’ pad, ya know? The shag carpeting, the cool stained glass doors on her kitchen/bar thingy…she had a lot of ’slash’ features in her pad, but it was so groovy.
I suppose it was groovy to me because she was single. Most women on television back in the seventies were married. Devoted moms who cherished their kids and encouraged their husbands. Where was the career girl who wasn’t a big ho?
Stewardesses were dodgy, morally speaking back then. Ain’t it funny? Sexism was pervasive. Mary Tyler Moore broke new ground for women.

She was single, she was learning to stand up for herself and she wasn’t emasculating the way single career women were portrayed back then. Heck, sometimes they’re portrayed that way now. But now, there’s  a difference. Women who remain in the home to raise their families have to apologize for not having a career outside the home.

It takes courage to stay home and slowly lose your mind. It takes a measure of resilience to endure hours of the same Disney movie without becoming the ‘Lady and The Tramp’ Serial DVD Killer. I’m not saying that movies babysit your kids every day, but when you’re trying to clean the house, and the kids want to watch ‘The Little Mermaid’ over and over again…movies can be your best friend.

Your bank account seems more important than your humanity these days. I’ve spoken to a lot of women over the years and it seems the younger generation is interested in starting a new breed of yuppie. Yikes, man. They don’t even understand the strides women have made. They take it all for granted. There is no heart in what they do for the most part. I guess that’s why I cherish Mary and Rhoda so much.

They were cool, single, and trying to figure it all out. They let me know that it’s okay to make mistakes in your life as long as you can grow from it. They didn’t coddle one another, they encouraged.  Cool and heady stuff for an impressionable kid growing up in the suburbs.
Anyway, I’m wondering who your role models were. I’m wondering if you wanted to be ‘Julia’ (remember that one?), maybe you wanted to be ‘Jennifer’ from WKRP…maybe you wanted to be Johnny Fever. Whatever the case, tell me. I’d love to hear about it.