When I recommend The Mary Tyler Moore Show to people, I usually mention that I love it because of the jokes, the lovable characters, and the fabulous style. While listing the show’s charms, it’s easy for me as a modern viewer to forget that on top of all of the standard qualities of an excellent sitcom, it was also trailblazing in changing the representation of working women in American pop culture.
I was born in 2004 and raised in an environment where women’s place in the workforce, particularly in positions of authority, was commonplace. The idea of a woman’s job opportunities in an office setting being limited to secretary seemed so alien that it might as well have been ancient history.
But it’s barely history. It hasn’t even been close to a century. Most of these developments happened during the second wave of the feminist movement and took place in the latter half of the 20th century and were experienced in our mothers and grandmothers lifetimes.
Enter Mary
The Mary Tyler Moore Show first aired in 1970 and, in many ways, captured this moment of sweeping change of women’s place in society, from the excitement of expanding opportunities for women at the time, to the difficulties of dealing with remnants from the not-too-distant past. Mary Richards, the show’s lead character, has moved to Minneapolis and is starting at a new job after breaking off her engagement.
Although plenty of the show revolves around Mary’s social life, platonically and romantically, Mary’s professional life plays an integral role in the show. In the first episode, Mary lands a job as the associate producer of the evening news at one of Minneapolis news stations, and despite the many struggles that provide many of the show’s comedic plotlines, over time, she shows enormous professional growth and becomes highly respected in her field.
Mary’s life as a single woman in her early thirties, going on dates, dedicated to her career, living in her own apartment, and hanging out with her best friend doesn’t seem particularly remarkable compared to many characters on TV nowadays. But 56 years ago, when the pilot aired, these characteristics put Mary in stark contrast to the TV leading ladies that had come before her.
Trailblazing TV
Mary Richards was one of the first female TV characters to be depicted as earning her own living and leading an independent lifestyle. Not only was this sort of groundbreaking character on people’s screens, but she was the leading lady. In this way, Mary’s life in 1970 seems closer to that of modern sitcom heroines than to the limited depictions of women in 1960s sitcoms. Even comedic heroines like Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy, or Moore’s earlier role of Laura Petrie in The Dick Van Dyke Show, were primarily responsible for taking care of the home while their husbands worked, rather than being career women themselves.
Beyond the character’s trailblazing nature, Mary Richards’ comedic trials and tribulations provide wisdom still applicable to many young women’s careers today. Among many other lessons she showed you can be kind while still asserting yourself, you can be genial while not letting other people walk all over you, you can ask for help without diminishing yourself, and that perhaps most importantly that the support of your community both at work and at home is often integral to solving your problems rather than facing it all on your own.
While The Mary Tyler Moore Show is about a fictional character in a fictional workplace, with all the idealization and sanitization that tends to come in a sitcom, the show still, in many ways, captures a snapshot of a time of radical change for the lives of young women in America. And watching the show now, I think I may have an even greater appreciation for Mary Richards than I could have had as a contemporary viewer.
The sweet, dedicated, and hardworking Mary Richards never made a big deal about her job or her position as a woman in a position of authority at said job. But watching now and looking back on the shows cultural context, both what came before and what was to come after, I feel like I have an appreciation for Mary Richards beyond her lovable qualities as a character, which is an appreciation for her as a female character charting previously unnavigated waters in the sea of television and successfully creating a precedent that would open doors for decades of women who cared deeply and unabashedly about their careers to not only follow in her footsteps on TV shows, but to follow her example in real life.