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The Impossible Woman examines scripted television programs featuring exceptional women and how these shows contribute to
sexist realism, or the cultural assumption that there is no alternative to patriarchy. This book explains how the problems facing television’s strongest women illustrates television’s inability to imagine a just feminist future.
List of contents
Introduction: Sexist Realism and the Crises of Contemporary Feminism
Chapter 1: Impossibly Resilient:
Parks and Recreation’s Leslie Knope
Chapter 2: Improbably Cheerful:
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Chapter 3: Exquisitely Lonely:
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and
The Queen’s Gambit’s Beth Harmon
Chapter 4: Insanely Gifted:
Game of Thrones’ Daenerys Targaryen
Chapter 5: Gangster Girlboss:
The Queen of the South Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
About the author
KRISTEN HOERL
is an associate professor of rhetoric and public culture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is the author of
The Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements.
