Go Stewie Go

Heidi Rae Hosmer
WST 3015
3/17/10


A Feminist Analysis of Family Guy
In the Family Guy episode "Go Stewie Go", one of the main plot points involves Lois feeling belittled by Peter's comments about her age. When Meg's boyfriend, Anthony, makes flattering comments toward Lois, she later gets caught making out with him. When she confesses to Peter, Peter tells her he was only making fun of her age because he didn't want her to notice how old and fat he was getting.

When Lois turns to Bonnie for advice about her feelings for Anthony, she is told that it is okay, even perfectly normal, for her to explore her sexuality. This endorsement of adultery challenges the traditional belief that women should have only one partner, and should remain untouched by anyone but their husbands (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 150). The conflict of the story also recognizes Lois as not just a sexless mother as many TV shows portray women, but as a woman with sexual needs.

Unfortunately, Lois seems to accept Peter's objectification of her. She tolerates his comments, and when they become abusive, she feels "worthless" because she's not sexy enough for him. This problem is eventually resolved when Peter reveals that he was being immature and projecting, hoping she wouldn't notice his deficiencies by trying to draw her attention to her own.

The relationship between Meg and Lois becomes very unusual when Meg catches her mother making out with her boyfriend. After the encounter, Lois goes to Meg's room to talk to her about what happened and apologize. What at first appears to be a set-up for a mother-daughter discussion, turns into Meg pounding her chest over what she would do to keep her man. Suddenly, instead of seeing her mother as a mother, Meg sees Lois as competition for sexual attentions. She ridicules Lois's age, implying that she is not capable of "stealing" her boyfriend from her because she is so old, and unattractive for it. Even though Meg seems to maintain the perception of older women as sexless, she still behaves threatened by her mother's advances on her boyfriend.

While Lois is busy with her little affair, Stewie is attending an audition for a children's TV show. Lois is rarely portrayed as his primary caregiver, and in fact he is never with her during this episode. Instead, he is watched after by Brian, the family dog. While this may not be realistic, it promotes the idea that a family can have other caregivers watching after children, even male caregivers. Like many women caregivers, Brian is not compensated for his childcare services. If it weren't for the fact that he was a dog and didn't have to work, he might face discrimination in his pay for taking time away from work to care for a baby (Crittenden 343)

Overall, Family Guy seems to challenge some of the stereotypes of motherhood and childcare, and portray relationships in more unconventional ways. But it does so often in very bizarre ways.


Word Count: 489

Crittenden,Ann. "The Mommy Tax". Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. New York: New York University Press, 2007. 337-345. Print.

Kirk, Gwyn, and Okazawa-Rey, Margo. Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 150. Print.

Goodbye Earl: Domestic Violence and Murder

Heidi Rae Hosmer
WST 3015
3/14/10


A Feminist Analysis of "Goodbye Earl" by the Dixie Chicks


Dixie Chick's song "Goodbye Earl" is one I remember very well, having grown up on country music. I even remember the controversy surrounding this song, how the radio D.J.s would take callers and listen to their input on whether or not the song should even be played on their station. Mothers and fathers were concerned children might hear the song and become confused, and think killing their abuser was an appropriate response to violence (domestic or otherwise). Others noted the Dixie Chicks' tongue-in-cheek tone, and how, if a child was old enough to understand the lyrics, they were old enough to know it was "just a song."

At the time I sided with the listeners who took the song very lightly. In fact, I still do. But I have a better idea of where the concerned parents were coming from. Though in the song Wanda escapes her domestic abuse situation, she only does so by escalating the violence and becoming the abuser. She and Mary Ann didn't batter and hospitalize Earl the way he did to Wanda, but killed him through the much more passive method of poisoning. This action isn't as blatantly, fist-to-face violent as Earl's abuse was, but even still it qualifies as intimate partner violence (Seely 187-189).

The song also has undertones implying that Earl was unwanted, unimportant, and even sub-human. The verse "[I]t turns out he was a missing person who nobody missed at all" minimizes the weight of the crime committed by these women. Just because he was a man, did not mean he was incapable of being victimized. In fact, the assumption that men are not victims of intimate partner violence is probably the reason the law enforcement in the song did not look into his disappearance.

If Wanda's case were to go to trial, Earl's body found and the women accused of murder, her attorney may have made references to "battered women syndrome" (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 264) and called experts to testify that Wanda suffered from this affliction. They would have claimed Wanda saw no other way out of her situation. this would only minimize Wanda's responsibility for her actions, and lay all the blame on Mary Ann, who could not be suffering similarly since she was not the victim of abuse. Wanda would more than likely receive minimal punishment, and be perceived as just as weak as if she were still being battered.

"Goodbye Earl" can easily be mistaken as empowering and feminist, but feminism is not about taking the law into our own hands and becoming the victimizer instead of the victim. It is about ending violence, against men and women, and changing the laws to make them more effective to that end. Some women who heard this song may have sympathized with these characters, and felt empowered to take control of their situation with a domestic partner. If so, I can only hope they chose to do so legally.

Word Count: 489

Seely, Megan. Fight Like a Girl: How to be a Fearless Feminist. New York: New York University Press, 2007. 187-189. Print.

Kirk, Gwyn, and Okazawa-Rey, Margo. Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 264. Print.