Normally, when I tell people that Liz Lemon not only is the character who is most like me, but is exactly who I aspire to be, my number one role model in life, I get a lot of incredulous responses.
No, wait, let me amend that. When I tell men that, I get a lot of incredulous responses.
“But Liz Lemon is such a failure!” They say. “Isn’t the whole point that she’s a farce and ultimately unhappy? There are people like Buffy and Scully and Veronica Mars and you’d choose to be Liz Lemon?” And I say yes, yes I would. I would never poo-poo any of the lovely ladies other people cite, but there’s a reason women love Liz, that women watch her and laugh as much as they identify with her, all while aspiring to be her. And it’s exactly for the reason so many of my guy friends don’t get — it’s because she’s a failure.
Being a girl is hard. We’re supposed to be feminists (but not too much or that scares away the fellas), ambitious (but not at the cost of our personal and romantic lives, lest we end up, gasp, unmarried), the perfect mother (but not at the cost of our careers, and heaven forbid we don’t want children), intelligent (but not too brainy), beautiful (like we have some sort of say in that), funny (but not too funny, lest we threaten the menfolk), modest and demure (but secretly asking for it, like a sexy librarian. And in the privacy of our bedrooms, we are to be goddesses of pleasure, like we have read every back-issue of Cosmo ever).
Women being told they will never, ever, ever be good enough is what keeps our economy running. Why else would super diet foods exist, or Spanx, or lady magazines? Have you seen a commercial lately? Read a book from Oprah’s book club? If we’re not perfect, we’re told, we’ll die bitter, old and alone or perhaps surrounded by grandchildren we never wanted because they stood in the way of our careers as successful lawyers, and if we were successful lawyers, we will have cats. Cats will be all we have left. And when they find us a week later because of the smell, those cats will have eaten us.
And don’t get me wrong, I love the Buffys of the world. I love feminist superheroes who kick butt, take names, and look super-cute doing it. I love that they struggle to balance all these things but you know what? They always manage to. They get their happily (or happily enough) ever after, and then walk off into the sunset with their awesome hair after saving the world yet again. And that’s great. The world needs feminist superheroes, but what about the rest of us?
Most women are Liz Lemons. We have secret mustaches and eat our night cheese and Sabor de Soledad in our Snuggies. We have dorky pajamas and allergies and sleep with humidifiers on. We use the oven to warm our jeans, can’t quite put together IKEA furniture, and quite frankly, we don’t have our crap together. We can’t balance our lives. We have no idea how to balance our lives, and even if we find a balance that works for us, there will be people that make us doubt ourselves. Should we really have given up this for that? Have we gone too far in one direction? If we’d made better choices, could we really have had it all? What is “it all” anyway?
I want to be Liz Lemon because she embraces her failure. So maybe first she gets a wedding dress, but she has plans! She’ll meet a super-cute guy in heaven! I want to be Liz Lemon because she is who she is. She makes no apologies. She gets through her life the best she knows how and bears it all with good humor. That’s the kind of woman I want to be. That’s the kind of woman I want to see on my television. I want to see a woman who’s as flawed and confused as I am, not another ideal I’m afraid I’ll never live up to.
You can keep your heroines, I’ll keep my Liz Lemon, goddess of real girls everywhere.
Suck it, nerds.
Clacked by Julia Hass 
on Mar 10, 2010 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
Here, here! Also, she has disproportionately hot boyfriends for someone who’s supposed to be unattractive, though of course Tina Fey’s just a little too smoking to make that part believable.