In an age where online streaming shows and movies are dominating media, Amazon Prime has delivered with their new series Good Girls Revolt. Based off of the lawsuit against Newsweek Magazine in 1970 and the 2013 book Good Girls Revolt by Lynn Povich who was working at Newsweek at the time. The show follows the female staff of Newsweek who go against the system to get gender equality in the workplace. Until the lawsuit, women at Newsweek were told that they “could not write”, so they pushed around carts, got coffee for their writers, fact checked articles, did researchers for their male colleagues and rarely got to edit an article but never wrote one of their own. After plotting in the women's bathroom for months, forty six women sued Newsweek for gender discrimination.
Creator of the Amazon series Dana Calvo takes the important facts and details from the non-fiction book and then fictionalizes the show by renaming the magazine News of the Week and only keeping a few original characters names the same like Nora Ephron, played by Grace Gummer and Eleanor Holmes Norton, played by Joy Bryant. Each character in the show represents the different types of women that embodied the 1960’s and 1970’s. First comes the whimsical hippie Pattie (Genevieve Angelson), the goodie two shoes Jane (Anna Camp), and the mousy one Cindy (Erin Darke). The idea of a lawsuit was sparked when these four female characters meet Eleanor Holmes Norton a lawyer at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission at women’s consciousness raising meeting. The first episode clearly established the hierarchy of the magazine. Women are considered ‘researches’ who work in ‘the pit’, which is one flight of stairs below where the male ‘reporters’ work and put their names on articles.
A similar show to Good Girls Revolt would be Mad Men which aired on AMC. Both have juicy workplace drama, are let in the same time period and pay close attention to real life cultural events. But Good Girls Revolt seems to take a step above Mad Men when it comes to dealing with gender discrimination. With a cast and plot driven completely by female characters, the show expresses the urgency and importance of equal rights not only in the workplace and at home. For example, editors will not allow a source to be published because of her sexual history and a backup singer from Los Angeles who cannot be quoted because is just a backup singer “...Who is there to serve.” When it comes to male characters in Good Girls Revolt, their plots seems to waver a little bit. There are two leading men in this series; Chris Diamantopoulos who plays Finn Woodhouse, the Editor in Chief at News of the Week, Whick McFadden, played by Jim Belushi. Both these men embody the type of person that the female workers are trying to sue, the type of male co-worker that only talks to women when they ask for coffee. Unfortunately compared to the female cast these male characters fall flat, almost two dimensional.
Even though I found it hard to get past the first two episodes, once the female characters continue to dig into the lawsuit I was hooked. The costumes, hair and set design perfect for the time period compliment and help forward the story. Just because this show is set 47 years ago, the topic of gender discrimination is still relevant today. If you are looking for a binge worthy series, I highly recommend you watch Good Girls Revolt on Amazon.
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