Cautionary Tales of Liberation and Female Professionalism: The Case Against Ally McBeal

Time Magazine's June 1998 cover asked the question 'Is Feminism Dead?' In a related paper, Bellafante (1998) places Ally in the middle of a 'popular culture insistent on offering images of grown single women as frazzled, self-absorbed girls' (p. 58). Ally has been labeled the ultimate 'male producer's fantasy of feminism, which manages simultaneously to exploit and to deplore, to arouse and to moralize' (Shalit, 1998, p. 30). Shalit concludes that the show is successful, despite the fact that it is a 'slap in the face of the real-life working girl', because it makes 'male power and female powerlessness seem harmless, cuddly, sexy, safe and sellable' (p. 32). Shalit's emphasis on the series' representation of Ally as a 'working girl' draws attention to McBeal's place within a lineage of media depictions of professional women.