American Studies

Thesis

Girlfailures on TV: Are they Helping or (Girl)Failing Women?

My thesis is about the character trope of girlfailure and what that has come to mean in response to the rise of the term girlboss. I examine this term as it has risen in popular discourse as a trope that is understood through female television characters, and as being antithetical to girlboss. I look at three case studies, Liz Lemon from 30 Rock, Sweet Dee from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, and Fleabag from Fleabag to show what this trope looks like in television and what it means in a larger feminist context. I argue that it offers a less restrictive representation for female characters in television, who don’t have to succeed in a capitalist or patriarchal sense to be deserving of representation on screen. However, it does simultaneously reinforce some white, patriarchal and heterosexual expectations of women in the construction of the term itself, and in its post-feminist comedic sensibility.