Mrs America review, Culture Whisper
On the face of it, a sympathetic portrait of the anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly sounds ill-advised, like chucking fireworks on a political bonfire. But in Mrs America, writer/creator Dahvi Waller (Mad Men), who’s no stranger to showing the misogynistic systems of 20th-century America, creates a fascinating, nuanced version of a polarising, conservative force. You can’t help but feel at least a modicum of guilt: you come to like her.
It’d be so easy and so tempting to paint Schlafly as a Republican demon with a lot of poise, but this nine-part miniseries examines the well-dressed layers beneath her advocacy for gender inequality in the 70s.
Parallel to this, Mrs America follows the eclectic fury of personalities forming the second-wave feminist movement, which includes the likes of Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug. Yet while showing the good sides of Schlafly, the series also shows the bad sides of the feminists, particularly the white feminists, who aren’t always the all-good superheroines of the liberal zeitgeist.
