How "House of Cards" Exposed Feminism's Dirty Little Secret

"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well" - Robert Louis Stevenson


(Warning! Spoilers below on Season 2)

"House of Cards" Season 2 has been THE hot topic on social media (Facebook, Twitter) and has generated a gazillion debates about the show's female lead, Claire Underwood (played by the always fantastic Robin Wright). Regal, cold, and downright cutthroat, Claire is unapologetic in her ambitions, and is every bit the partner to her power hungry spouse, Vice-President Frank Underwood.  Mousy, political wife Claire is not.

This season, "House of Cards" wisely expanded their cast with equally compelling and fiercely ambitious female characters including House Majority Whip Jackie Sharpe (Molly Parker) , an ex-soldier turned politician who Frank admires for her "ruthless pragmatism."   In some ways Jackie is the fiery counterpart to Claire's ice queen exterior and their scenes together illustrate that strong, powerful women come in very different ideological packages.

While Claire for the most part was an intriguing enigma, her background and non-traditional marriage to Francis were front and center in Season 2.  In Episode 4, the Underwoods decide to raise their public profile by agreeing to a sit-down interview with Ashleigh Banford.  When Frank is unable to attend, Claire chooses to hold down the fort.  The interview starts off innocently enough when Ashleigh surprises Claire with two childhood pictures - one of her with her horse Red on her family ranch, and the second dressed in her prep school uniform.  Ashleigh then engages Claire in an interesting exchange:

Ashleigh: "You grew up in Dallas though. Highland Park."

Claire: "Yes. My father, well, he was a businessman, so we lived in the city.  But we're ranchers, we go back three generations, our family." 

Ashleigh: "Your parents were very wealthy."

Claire: "We were comfortable, yes.  They made sure I wanted for nothing.  It was a very happy childhood."

If you observe Claire's facial expression and body language, being presented with her privilege was probably the last thing she expected to discuss.  But if you're a fan of "House of Cards" you know that nothing in this show is ever gratuitous.  While female viewers (myself included) love and adore Claire for her polish, intelligence and killer fashion sense, we should also remember that who she is very much informed by her socio-economic status.  Having parents with vast financial resources gave Claire access to a first-class education, hours of tutelage in social etiquette and a path to engage in power politics that would be almost impossible for women with lesser economic means.

Since the release of "House of Cards" second season, feminist bloggers and websites have written tributes to the fabulousness that is Claire Underwood, one website crowning her a "Feminist Warrior Antihero."  Which in turn has spawned countless debates; is Claire indeed a feminist, and is she an anti-hero or a villain?  All fun and interesting conversations to be had of course, but my question is this - where does Rachel Posner fit in our feminist landscape?  Because I thought the whole point of feminism was about women having agency and being self-empowered - right?  But we don't think about Rachel because, perhaps her character is too transgressive for our rather rigid ideals of what constitutes a feminist icon.  Rachel doesn't share Claire's posh background and being a former prostitute places her on the fringes of society.  But this season Rachel becomes more than just a pawn in Frank Underwood's power play. She has wants and needs and begins to question and ultimately rebels against Doug Stamper's well meaning (at times), but controlling patriarchal protection.

 Series creator Beau Willimon cleverly sets us up with two women - Claire and Rachel - on very different paths to empowerment, but yet we (the audience)  predictably gravitate and write about an image of feminism that Hollywood has drilled tirelessly into our heads - White, cis-gendered, able-bodied and privileged.

Primetime television is a habitual offender of promoting this archetype of feminism, as witnessed in "American Horror Story Coven."  Was it really that surprising that Delia ended up being the next Supreme?  Even though Ryan Murphy presented us with a wonderfully diverse group of potentials, they were all disqualified for the thing that made each of them so damn interesting.  Queenie? Black and not a size 0.  Nan?  A Supreme with Down's Syndrome, not a chance.  Madison and Zoe? Close, but engaging in a menage-a-trois  bordering on necrophilia? Not happening.  Misty Day? Her lower-class "hippie swamp rat" lifestyle made her a no-no.  And notice how Murphy conveniently took Marie Leveau (who was easily Fiona Goode's equal) out of the running by making her *quelle horreur!* a  baby killer.

By the last episode, Murphy puts Delia on the fast track to Supremehood by making her go through an  Evelyn Woods Speed Training for Witchcraft; surpassing the other candidates who had already manifested powers superior to hers.  In Delia, Murphy found his wet dream of the primetime feminist icon, with her eyesight magically restored of course. A blind Supreme? Why that would just be uncivilized!

Even Carrie Bradshaw, a popular TV feminist icon, has gotten the "privileged White woman" makeover.  In the HBO series, Carrie makes several references to being raised by a single mother and struggling to make ends meet when she moved to New York in her early twenties. But with the CW series "The Carrie Diaries" she is now from Castlebury, Connecticut, having lived a comfortable suburban existence.


And while I'm a huge fan of "Game of Thrones" I found that last shot of Daenerys' pale White body floating above a sea of brown people in last year's season finale extremely problematic on so many levels:

I mean, seriously?! No ma'am, can't co-sign on that.

I'm sure if you made a list of television's most memorable feminist icons, you will find the same patterns of White female privilege we find in the real world. And that's the dirty little secret mainstream feminism doesn't want to talk about. As much as we rail against White male patriarchy and White male privilege, when we try to apply the same critiques to feminism, we end up with a painfully awkward silence or flat out denial.  To say that all women are the same and that we are all "connected by our experiences" is naive at best and flat-out misdirection at worst.

While "House of Cards" bravely tackled the issue of rape and abortion with Claire, her privilege did shield her to a certain extent.  Claire didn't have to worry about affording the procedure, or having to make her way through a picket line with pictures of  aborted fetuses in front of the local clinic. At the time, Claire's procedures were done privately and safely, away from the glare of public condemnation.  I don't know if Rachel ever terminated a pregnancy, but if she did, I'm confident in saying her experience would be light years away from Claire's.

I would be a hypocrite to say that I don't stan for Claire - she is blunt, a total bad-ass and loves her husband beyond devotion. But I also have love for Rachel and cheered as I watched her grow into her own personal power.  If we can't talk about BOTH of these women,  then the conversation on feminist imagery will forever remain stagnant.

Lest we forget, our own early feminist founders weren't so inclusive and welcoming.  Historian Liz Ginzberg, author of "Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life" said of the famous suffragette:

"She certainly claimed that she fought for the rights of all women. She fought to end the barriers that denied America citizens their rights purely on the basis of sex, and she demanded rights that not one of us would be willing to give up. I mean, she demanded — in the true liberal tradition — access to the mainstream of American society in terms of professions, education, law, politics, property and so on. But when she said 'women,' I think ... that she primarily had in mind women much like herself: white, middle-class, culturally if not religiously protestant, propertied, well-educated. And my disagreement with Stanton is that she ... came to see women like herself as more deserving of rights than other people."

Luckily women showrunners like Shonda Rhimes ("Scandal", "Grey's Anatomy"), Mara Brock Akil ("Girlfriends", "Being Mary Jane") and Jenji Kohan ("Orange Is The New Black") are chipping away at this monolithic view of feminism with bold female characters that we may not like or always agree with, but expand the scope and images of primetime feminism. 

 "House of Cards" reminds us that our powerful feminist icons aren't just created in a vacuum, and pulled back the curtain to see "how the sausage is made."  Privilege shapes our decisions and how we move in our everyday world.  While we are absolutely free to admire characters like Claire Underwood, I would ask that we step back and see if there's diversity (color, class, age, body type etc.) in the other primetime female characters we find so equally compelling.  Only when we allow every woman to sit at the table, then we can have the real and meaningful conversation that will propel feminism to its next evolutionary step.