1) Women basically rule the hospital.
Bailey’s the Chief of Surgery. Meredith runs General Surgery. Maggie heads Cardio. Amelia runs Neuro. Stephanie and Jo are high-performing senior residents who will more than likely go far in life despite the obstacles they have faced. While April still technically answers to Owen, she is a strong presence in trauma surgery and the ER. Catherine Avery pulls strings behind the scenes as the hospital’s owner
2) It’s incredibly sex-positive
Needless to say, Grey’s is full of sex scenes (almost all consensual ones!). The women involved tend to jump in eagerly and shamelessly, and rarely, if ever, do we see any form of slut-shaming on screen.
3) The women can get on just fine without men
While McDreamy’s death was undoubtedly one of the show’s most heartbreaking moments, Meredith has recovered well and is doing a pretty dang good job living and raising their children without him. After (and during) both of her stints with men, Cristina showed relentless devotion to practicing medicine and advancing in her career. Catherine hasn’t been with Jackson’s father for ages, and she is definitely a force to be reckoned with. Losing Mark was painful, but Callie and Arizona continued to be great parents to Sofia. April refuses to let her recent divorce get her down. Alex, as many of you know, is in trouble right now after his attack on Andrew, and his actions have essentially destroyed his relationship with Jo. However, Jo, the consummate perseverer, is not letting her relationships or lack thereof interfere with her surgical education.
4) It’s a paragon of representation
As the show has evolved, the characters have only become more and more diverse, truly showing that people from all walks of life can succeed if they want to do so. Shonda Rhimes has taken care to make sure that her show speaks to experiences of people of all races, genders, sexualities, abilities, and socioeconomic backgrounds. The hospital has had two black Chiefs of Surgery, as well as black, Latina, biracial, and Asian department heads and attendings. Grey’s, as we already know, has more than its fair share of strong, independent female characters. Callie (who is bisexual) and Arizona (who is a lesbian) were arguably one of the best same-sex couples portrayed on TV while they were together. Arizona represents people with disabilities/chronic illnesses with her prosthetic leg, as do Stephanie (with her history of sickle-cell disease) and Izzie (who survived cancer). Grey’s gives coverage to a variety of rare and common chronic physical diseases, as well as mental illnesses such as depression, OCD, drug addiction, alcoholism, and PTSD. Also, characters like Jo and Alex, both foster care veterans, demonstrate how it is possible to “rise up” (Hamilton, anyone?) despite childhood adversity.
5) Izzie lingerie-modeled her way through med school and refused to be ashamed of it
That was how she financed her education, and she was not about to let the slut-shaming get to her.
6) Women can propose to men, too!
Catherine’s proposal to Richard in Season 11 was just as sweet and mushy as any other.
7) It shows that motherhood comes in all shapes and sizes
Grey’s showcases same-sex parents (who have both been to hell and back and still do a great job with Sofia), moms who raise their kids while being successful doctors (though some, like Ellis Grey, admittedly had serious shortcomings when it came to parenting), single moms (both widowed and divorced), older moms who are heavily involved in their adult children’s lives, and moms who give their kids space once they leave the nest.
8) April Kepner learns to stand up for herself and becomes a total bad*ss
She goes from being the brunt of her fellow residents’ mockery, the “ugly duckling” among her three sisters, the one who fails her boards on the first try after experiencing a moral crisis in the middle of the oral exam, to a widely respected figure, a “boss-*ss b*tch”, to use the popular phrase. April becomes a strong woman and a brave, skilled, compassionate surgeon who travels to war zones in the Middle East to save even more lives. In Season 11, when a man trapped in his destroyed car on the highway has no hope of being removed and saved unless he is in much closer proximity to a hospital, April brings the entire vehicle with the patient in it to the hospital’s ambulance bay, where a rescue crew extricates him so the doctors can perform surgery. And let’s not forget when she ordered Ben to give her a home C-section with a kitchen knife to save her second child!
9) It portrays abortion positively and complexly.
Izzie is initially hesitant to help a patient get an abortion, but changes her mind in the name of doing what’s best for the patient and respecting her wishes. Cristina made headlines for getting an abortion on primetime television in Season 8. Even April, a devout Christian, made the heart-wrenching decision that an induction termination at 24 weeks would be the best option for her and Jackson, as their unborn son’s bones were breaking in the womb and he would most likely not make it to term, or live a very short life full of pain and suffering if he did.