Doris Day Is Modern Feminist Hero
Leading Lady Day Did Much to Advance Career Acceptance For Women
Jul 21, 2009
The Women’s Movement in the seventies was marked by a strong desire to change women’s place in society by effecting change in legislation and organizing social groups to watchdog ideology in the media and workplace.
Many magazine column inches were devoted to 'feminist' issues in the 1960's and 1970's. The diligence of women such as Gloria Steinem and Helen Gurley Brown pressing the idea that women deserve equality in the bedroom, the boardroom, and anywhere else they would like to be, has brought such acceptance to society that people born after 1967 rarely think about "women's lib".
Feminists during this period criticized Doris Day’s onscreen roles as being detrimental to the movement because the women that she portrayed were too complacent, too conservative, too conventional, and too moral.
New Era of the Movement
In the 1990’s, a new emphasis of the feminist movement called the Third Wave began to encourage women to improve the collective station of women in society by concentrating on individual achievement and personal fulfillment. Judged by these standards, Doris Day’s film roles were three decades ahead of where the organized movement would eventually be going.
Day’s Contribution to Furthering the Cause
An important inroad into personal female success was started by Doris Day in the 1960's. Day may be best remembered as the goody-goody girl next door but her roles had layers of depth. While here characters may have been 'biding time' in one sense until they met the man of their dreams, they presented a woman who was using her talents and living a full life until he came along. How many real women of this period could say the same?
Day has played a successful mother on the big screen as well as on television and she often combined this facet of her personality along with playing a successful career woman in various fields such as advertising, public relations, interior design, product representation, union organization, construction, and industrial design. Her one lapse in cinematic judgement might have occurred with The Thrill of It All. A very entertaining film until the end when her co-star James Garner convinces Day to give up her day job doing commercials for a soap company in order to stay home and have another baby. As if she couldn't do both. Apparently, the character Beverly Boyer had never seen a Doris Day movie!
Doris Day Had it All Before Anyone Thought to Want it All
Day also portrayed film characters who were caring daughters, concerned friends, and who cultivated their own personal interests. These onscreen roles seem to reflect women who knew how to “have it all” decades before the phrase was even coined.
It may seem insignificant now but a review of leading lady roles in film before Doris Day reveals a long list of wives, mothers, seductresses, prostitutes, and spinsters. Occasionally a part such as Mildred Pierce came along which allowed an actress to play most of these roles in one film but they were few and far between. Perhaps it was this variety (and a great body of other film work) that won Joan Crawford the Academy Award for Best Actress.
It is arguable that filmmakers in the late fifties and early sixties were beginning to present stories that reflected their culture’s changing view of a woman’s place. However, without a personality like Doris Day who was able to portray these roles with such ability, grace, wit, and gumption, audiences would not have been as quick to accept the possibility of real women in these positions.
