In the wake of my mildly controversial decision to like Little Mosque on the Prairie, I’m going to up the ante and say that I also don’t mind Army Wives, when I can screen out the heroic-soldiers-deploying-to-Iraq side of things. They cover very little of the war itself; the focus is on the folks at home.
It’s mainly standard-issue reality-based soap opera, but I particularly liked this little moment, which busts some of the usual gender stereotypes you see on these sorts of shows. The masculinities are definitely not quite as one-dimensional as you might expect from a show of this genre.
Father at home? Check. He’s a psychiatrist, who clashed with his mother over the decision to be an at-home dad. High-ranking female officer sends male junior soldier off for urgent breastmilk delivery? Check. Male junior soldier ga-gas over ubercute baby while daddy prepares breastmilk, and none of this is presented as odd or out of the ordinary or laughable or masculinity-threatening? Sign me up.
But I can’t have been the only person yelling “PICK IT UP, IT’S NOT ALL GONE YET!” when this father drops the breastmilk and just stands there staring at it.
I was cringing at this point, thinking “oh, are we going to have the bumbling-dad ‘oh well, I’ll just grab some formula’ scene, followed by the mum-and-dad fight over it scene?” Which is not how it turned out, thank FSM. (At least, not yet.)
[The cut is just me cutting out the intervening scenes.]
http://www.clipser.com/Play?vid=1302716
[transcript to follow]
Categories: arts & entertainment, gender & feminism, work and family
For Mother’s Day have this film for FREE 
Sunday Singalong: Björk 
When the zombies come what will happen to feminism? 
Sunday Singalong: Deborah Conway 
Hoyden About Town 
THAT is just *adorable*.
Yep, absolute cringe-inside shrieking and beating the monitor though, when he stares down at the bottles.
I love it! My favorite part is that when he hands the baby off to the soldier, the soldier doesn’t act like he has no idea how to hold a baby. That happens so often in tv and movies – hand a baby to a guy, and he looks absolutely panicked, like he thinks it will either eat him or he’ll crush it by accident. It was so nice to see him take the baby without a second thought!
Finally!
I’m glad that men’s nurturing side has somehow made it into the media.