Bea Arthur was one of those rare actresses who could be her own woman and a feminist without being desexualized. Tall with a low, husky voice, Arthur was the first actress to portray a character who got an abortion on-screen (feminist), but was still the only Golden Girl who ended the series with a marriage (sex life). Bea Arthur, smart, hilarious, but still sexy and sexualized, is the type of actress who doesn’t come around too much anymore.
Most of the comedic actresses on television or in movies today are either traditionally beautiful (see blonde, thin Cameron Diaz) and/ or are comedic foils to men (Kevin James’ hot wife Leah Remini on The King of Queens). They are rarely allowed to be funny in their own right. And if they are, they are generally de-sexualized (see Ellen DeGegeneres in the first few seasons of her sitcom, before it was cancelled when her character reveals her lesbian sexuality). The only type of feminism depicted on the big and small screen is some screwed-up version of third wave—men are disposable buffoons used for sex sometimes, until the right, marriageable man comes around.
Bea Arthur was a different breed altogether. Arthur certainly was not traditionally beautiful. This never made her outside the attentions of men however. Her character Maude on the show of the same name was married three times—once widowed and twice divorced. She certainly wasn't lacking for any action in the bedroom.
On The Golden Girls, although she was often the brunt of jokes about her appearance, her character, Dorothy Zbornak, was still warding off the advances of very attractive men well into her sixties. Unlike most of today’s TV and movie creations, however, she never threw her friends away for her new love interest. Instead of playing secondary or even tertiary roles, Dorothy’s friends were the primary relationships in her life during the show and, as the show promised us, long into the start of her second marriage.
In all of her shows, Arthur and her female co-stars were never playing second fiddle to the men on the show. On The Golden Girls, for example, there were no primary male characters, which is revolutionary in itself. The women weren’t want for male attention, however—all into their late 50’s and 60’s, the women were flush with attractive older men for dates and sex.
However, the buoyancy of the show never revolved around men and rarely even had male characters delivering the punch lines. The girls, including Dorothy, the most deadpan and sarcastic of the bunch, joked with and about each other—they themselves were the comedians, they were making the jokes. They were never foils to men who were allowed to be funny. The dumb blonde, the old woman, the sexpot, the nerd—they all played to their age-old archetypes, but they were more than them at the same time. The best part about Arthur’s character was that she was a nerd, yes--a substitute teacher, an avid reader, there's the evidence-- but that never meant that she couldn’t be the sexpot, too.
New York City-born Arthur died in 2009 of lung cancer and the world will never see another one like her. She certainly got her praise for what she did in her lifetime, winning an Emmy for Maude in 1972 and for the Golden Girls in 1988. Today, you never see actresses, and certainly not older actresses, being praised for playing outspoken, feminist, sexual characters, not with awards or with long-term partnerships on their shows. Maybe because the parts like those Bea Arthur inspired aren’t even being written anymore.
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