The character of Johnson (however closely she hews to her real-life counterpart) is both a galvanizing force and a lightning rod, who goes around upending people’s schemata and otherwise generally not fitting in. A mildly harried single working mother with limited resources — that is, an exemplar for what we would now call bad life choices — Johnson is nonetheless portrayed as by far the happiest, most satisfied, least frustrated character on the show. And the writers aren’t the least bit equivocal in this: She derives her happiness and satisfaction from asking nothing more and nothing less from sex than pleasure (unlinking it from money); and from being creatively engaged in her work.
Johnson’s charm upsets the absurdly brittle and buttoned-up Dr. DePaul (Julianne Nicholson), the hospital’s sole female doctor, who resents the way Johnson is allowed to flaunt her “beauty and allure,” whereas Dr. DePaul feels obligated to hide every aspect of her female self if she wants to be taken seriously as a professional. One idea “Masters of Sex” keeps returning to is how not in control of their sexual identities women were back then; how blithely they were sorted into slots; how casually idealized or debased; how easily reduced to a single function. Of course, the in-joke is that every respectable character on the show “deviates” in one way or another, or longs to. Only Johnson allows herself to be everything she is, which is why there’s something about her that feels somehow modern, even anachronistic.
At this early point in its life span, “Masters of Sex” is still dwelling in the moment just before control over women’s sexuality and reproduction began to shift from men to women. But from where we stand, we can observe another shift. Sex may be completely out in the open now, but for all its prevalence, as I learned at the pornography conference, it still feels schematic and hidebound. In the past 30 years, ideas about what makes women “sexy” have become narrower, more rigid and more pornographic in their focus on display and performance. The pervasiveness of the porn aesthetic is especially insidious for young girls’ self-perception, as they constantly absorb the message that the modern choice comes down to either abject invisibility or duck-faced selfies across a portfolio of social-media accounts. I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking at when I see Kim Kardashian or Miley Cyrus, or their millions of adolescent imitators. But I’m pretty sure it’s not liberation.
by Carina Chocano, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Tom Gauld
