Leslie Knope – feminist, inspiration and future President of the USA

I just read an essay called The Ontology of Performance (to help my sister with a presentation) in which there was a lot of talk about speaking men and silent women and the problems of how women tell their side of history.

It was dense. On the other hand, here’s Amy Poehler as Leslie Knope in my favourite new silly American sitcom, Parks and Recreation – about the Parks department of Pawnee, a standard American town. If you wished the funny women got more screen time in The American Office, watch this.

In this clip, Leslie is pretending that she accidentally shot Ron Swanson, her boss, on a hunting trip. In thirty seconds, she captures a lot of what’s wrong with how men view most women.

In another episode, Leslie pays for a stripper to give her co-worker Tom Haverford a lapdance and tries to convince the stripper to choose another career path at the same time. And elsewhere, she cannot believe that Ron’s ex-wife Tammy would rather be Cleopatra – and manipulate men for her own personal gain – than Eleanor Roosevelt, one of Leslie’s heroes.

Women aren’t going to get on board with championing their own equality if everything written/ produced about it makes our heads hurt or is created by annoying warts’n’all female personalities. That said, Leslie is really desperate for a date/ relationship in most of the episodes I’ve watched – more honest than aspirational.

More Girls Running the World on Style & Then Some
The New Year’s Very Fashionable Honours List

Is it ladylike to watch men fight? S&TS’s second Telegraph London guest post

Pretty girls pretending to be unattractive | New Girl