In Praise of Difficult Women

by Karen Karbo

  Shonda Rhimes’s work ethic derives, I imagine, from having grown up watching her mom earn a Ph.D. while raising six kids. Born in Chicago in 1970, she was the baby of the family, shy and introverted, and found solace in books. Her storytelling genius revealed itself early. She liked to hide out in the kitchen pantry, where she constructed elaborate scenarios using canned fruit and vegetables as players and props. That her mom allowed this, only asking her to pass a can of peas or corn when the need arose during dinner preparation, tells you a lot about the sheer excellence of her parenting.

  Shonda is a difficult woman, good girl division. She works hard, achieves a lot, and mows down the competition (pretty much everyone in her path). She has compared herself to Tracy Flick, the hyper-driven anti-heroine of the 1999 film Election. She is a cheerful, self-professed workaholic and type-A perfectionist who’s happy in the overworking zone. Shonda graduated with honors from a Catholic high school and attended Dartmouth (more honors), then the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts (more honors), where she earned her MFA in 1995. Despite all the honors, once she got out of film school it was the usual thing: dull jobs that allowed her to write at night. Aspiring screenwriters can spend a decade trying to sell a script, but a mere three years later, in 1998, she caught a break and sold a script to New Line Cinema. In 1999 she was hired to co-write HBO’s Halle Berry vehicle Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. In 2001 she wrote another script, Crossroads, for Britney Spears’s film debut (panned by the critics, $60 million at the box office). On 9/11 she was holed up in Vermont working on another film script—and in a matter of days, she reexamined her life, her priorities, and what couldn’t wait. The top of the list: becoming a mother.

  Perhaps surprising for a perfectionistic titan of achievement, snagging the perfect husband—or any husband for that matter—was not on the list. In fact, although she likes having boyfriends, “I do not want a husband in my house,” she told Oprah. “I have never wanted to get married. I never played bride. I was never interested.”

  She did always long to be a mother, however. Less than a year later she adopted Harper. (She would go on to adopt two other daughters with equally cool literary names: Emerson and Beckett.) While home with the baby, she flipped on the TV and discovered a world she wanted in on. She wrote and filmed a pilot for an ABC show about female war correspondents (I would totally watch that), but it wasn’t a go. Her next pilot script was Grey’s Anatomy, after which came Private Practice in 2007, and Scandal in 2012, as well as the shows she executive produces under the ShondaLand banner: The Catch, Off the Map, How to Get Away with Murder, and Still Star-Crossed. In 2017, at the age of 47, Shonda Rhimes is queen of network TV’s most successful empire, the most powerful show runner in Hollywood. Not “the most powerful black female show runner,” which is how she’s sometimes described in the more boneheaded press releases. No. Most. Powerful. Show runner.

  When she was creating Grey’s Anatomy, Shonda Rhimes did something that in retrospect doesn’t seem revolutionary, or even that creative: She cast African Americans, Asians, and Latinas as brilliant doctors, then wrote them as fully dimensional human beings with fully dimensional lives.

  Have you ever been to a hospital? Have you taken a good look at the health care providers there? They do not look like the cast of How I Met Your Mother.*2 There are men and women. There are Asians, African Americans, Latinos. It’s a profession that attracts all races, colors, genders, and sexual preferences. It seems as if the advances of the civil rights movement and the women’s rights movement should have made the diversity on Grey’s Anatomy routine—and yet Shonda was hailed as a visionary. Network TV became more genuinely diverse. When Scandal premiered in 2012, it was the first show to star an African-American woman in 38 years.*3 Both shows enjoy consistently high ratings, and on Thursday nights Twitter is generally afire as fans of the shows share their thoughts in real time.

  I’m all for hailing Shonda Rhimes for pretty much everything.*4 She is bold and unapologetically enterprising, and she creates difficult women characters who make no bones about wanting what they want and doing what they need to do to get it. They are brilliant, determined, and complex. They are a lot like Shonda herself. Her genius further rests in making us prefer difficult women over their easier, more accommodating counterparts. In someone else’s hands Cristina Yang, the selfish, headstrong cardiac surgeon-genius of Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital played by Sandra Oh, or Olivia Pope, the whip-smart, uncompromising crisis manager and political “fixer” played by Kerry Washington, might be unlikable: the cardinal sin of both imaginary women and real women. But Shonda has managed to make them role models. Cristina Yang was written out of Grey’s Anatomy after season 10 (she left Seattle Grace to move to Zurich to commandeer a cutting-edge cardiac center). But I still summon up her wisdom, which is, of course, Shonda’s wisdom: The men in our lives “may be dreamy but are not the sun. You are.”

  IN 2015, SHONDA PUBLISHED a self-empowerment manifesto/memoir called Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person. It took me a bit to get my head around the premise: Didn’t Shonda, storytelling genius and unstoppable show runner, get where she was, in part, by saying yes to all those deal memos and series orders, to pitching yet another blockbuster show, to becoming a single mom of three, and all that that entails? But it turns out that saying yes to work stuff is easy when you’re a workaholic. Pretty much everything else sent her into a social anxiety–fueled tailspin.

  Like public speaking. (To deliver that TED talk was huge.)

  Like refusing to answer emails after 7 p.m.*5 (To be unavailable to everyone in the digital age takes a depressing amount of courage and discipline.)

  Like losing 150 pounds. (I’m tucking this impressive accomplishment in here, without fanfare, because Shonda despises the obsession with her transformation. “After I lost weight, I discovered that people found me valuable. Worthy of conversation. A person one could look at. A person one could compliment. A person one could admire. A person. You heard me. I discovered that NOW people saw me as a PERSON,” she wrote in her newsletter, Shondaland. Take that, weight-obsessed world.)

  Like saying yes to rethinking motherhood. “I find it offensive to motherhood to call being a mother a job. Being a mother isn’t a job. It’s who someone is. It’s who I am.” She’s also against the celebration of the mom as martyr, and goes on a fine rant about how perverse it is to celebrate mothers for their ability to suffer, to make themselves small and without needs for the sake of their family. She wants to start a line of Mother’s Day greeting cards that say stuff like “Happy Mother’s Day to the mom who taught me to be strong, to be powerful, to be independent, to be competitive, to be fiercely myself and fight for what I want.”

  Shonda is difficult because she’s all about owning her tremendous competence and badassery. Her achievements are huge, and there’s no reason on Earth she should pretend otherwise. Let’s take a page from her book, instead of falling over ourselves to write off our great job, our promotion, our special award as good luck or the universe smiling down on us or anything else other than our own intelligence, dedication, discipline, and talent. Let’s be like Shonda and strut a little.

  *1It premiered on March 27, 2005.

  *2Possibly the whitest cast of all time. Also: Friends, Dawson’s Creek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

  *3In 1974 Teresa Graves starred in Get Christie Love!

  *4We are both alumnae of USC film school, a proud and insular clan.

  *5Email her and you will read this signature line—“Please note: I will not engage in work emails after 7 p.m. or on weekends. IF I AM YOUR BOSS, MAY I SUGGEST: PUT DOWN YOUR PHONE.”

  CHAPTER 11

  EVA PERÓN

  Fanatical

  MOST OF US KNOW EVA PERÓN from the 1978 rock opera Evita, during which Patti LuPone, her hair slicked back in Evita’s trademark honey blond chignon, belte
d out “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.” Or, in my case, from the commercial that played every morning during the Today show for what seemed like months. I was a college student, and would watch it while I ate my Frosted Flakes before heading off to class. I still remember the spot, pretty much shot for shot. While LuPone beseeched her beloved nation to love her back, sexy, bearded Mandy Patinkin as Che Guevara (that beret!) sat backward in a chair, watching the first lady with a smoldering look that ignited in me a brief interest in finding myself a nice revolutionary to date. And also inspired a lifelong fascination in the glamorous, difficult Evita.

  Between 1946 and her death in 1952, Evita—a onetime radio star and B-list actress—was the most powerful woman in the Americas. Fanatically devoted to her husband, President Juan Perón, Evita was instrumental in gaining the vote for women and creating an astonishing network of modern social services, while also sanctioning extortion, bribery, and corruption. To her followers, she was a saint sent by God. To her detractors, she was a cheap tart from the provinces. Before she died of cancer at 33, the bought-and-sold Congress bestowed upon her the accolade “Spiritual Mother of All Argentines.” She was, in the end, a complicated woman: opinionated, compassionate, vengeful, high-handed. In other words, difficult.

  EVITA WAS BORN IN 1919 in Los Toldos, a poor village 150 miles west of Buenos Aires. She was the fifth illegitimate child of Juana Ibarguren, mistress of Juan Duarte, a ranch manager and big man around town. Juan Duarte had a nice car and a title, justice of the peace. He was so well liked that everyone looked the other way when it came to Blanca, Elisa, Juan, Erminda, and Eva María, the children he’d sired with Juana.

  That Juan had a proper wife and three other children in another village shocked no one, nor did anyone disapprove. He came and went as he pleased, tossed some money in Juana’s direction now and then, and in all ways behaved like a typical Argentinian man of his time. Nevertheless, people chose to condemn Juana for behaving as if she were a proper wife. She was an excellent seamstress, and she and her children were clean and had nice clothes. She wore perfume, which was viewed as pretentious. The true scandal was that a simple, unmarried seamstress dared to exhibit self-respect. (She, too, was a difficult woman.)

  Juana Ibarguren got her comeuppance soon enough. When Eva was only a year old, Juan Duarte returned to his former village and his first wife for good, effectively abandoning Juana and their children and plunging them all into poverty. But then he was killed in a car accident. Once Juan was gone, Juana was reduced to accepting handouts from people in the village—some of whom were men. They gave her the occasional chicken, some vegetables, milk, and bread to feed her children. Immediately she was deemed a common whore. Her daughters were considered damaged goods by proxy, even though they were still little girls.

  Be prepared: The phrase “common whore” pops up a lot in Evita’s story. In her short life, any time she branched out, made a decision, got a break, leaned in, moved on, soldiered forth, or spoke out, someone somewhere explained it away as the result of sexual favors. It’s the go-to insult in a culture so macho that any time a woman does anything aside from the laundry, she’s a common whore. Even the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, who you would think had a more developed vocabulary, would refer to the first lady by this moniker. It’s of note that there’s no obverse, no uncommon whore. But if there were anyone worthy of being called an exceptional whore, it would be Evita.

  In 1930, Juana left Los Toldos for the provincial city of Junín, where she hoped to attract more clothing clients, and where her older children were able to get work. Eva was sent to school, where her teachers would remember her large, dark eyes and porcelain skin, but not much else. She apparently loved to recite poetry, and would do so at the local record shop in a sort of open mic arrangement. Mostly, she loved American movies, which reached the cinemas of Junín a good five years after they were released in the States. No matter. Eva was hypnotized by the clothes, jewels, lipstick, nail polish, and glamour. She now had a goal: to be a movie star!

  Legend has it that in 1934, at 15, Eva dropped out of school and became the mistress of a local tango singer, Agustín Magaldi, and made her way to Buenos Aires on his arm to pursue her dream. There’s also a screwball comedy version, wherein she attempted to seduce him; when the married Magaldi turned her down, she sneaked into his train compartment as he traveled back to Buenos Aires. Neither of these stories is true, as it turns out, for there is no record of Magaldi visiting or performing in Junín the year Eva left.

  From this point on in Evita’s life, there would be at least three versions of everything that happened to her: the version put forth by Evita’s supporters; the version put forth by Evita’s detractors; and the version valiantly put forth by legitimate historians who have no political skin in the game. Given the dearth of official records in early 20th-century Argentina, Eva’s refusal to acknowledge or elaborate on her personal history after she married Juan Perón, the robust suppression of the press during his presidency, and the tonnage of mawkish hagiography that does exist, the valiant historians are at a clear disadvantage. Still, we do the best we can.

  It is highly likely that Eva made her way to Buenos Aires the way most teenagers without a driver’s license do: by pestering her mother in the usual relentless teenage fashion. At some point, Juana probably shouted “FINE! ALL RIGHT!” and together they traveled to the capital to investigate what sort of work might be available. Juana helped settle Eva in a small pensione, then returned to Junín. In March 1935, Eva landed her first theatrical role, in the play Mrs. Perez at the Comedias Theater.

  BUENOS AIRES WAS THE MANHATTAN of Argentina, seasoned with extra macho sauce. Settled by Spain in the 14th century, further colonized by Britain in the 19th, and heavily influenced by France, the city felt European—that is, if you replaced the dainty shops with football stadiums and boxing rings.

  The world of the theater in the mid-1930s was a microcosm of Buenos Aires society. The stars were usually related to the producer and well compensated, and their living and travel costs were picked up by the theater company. The other players practically starved. They weren’t paid for rehearsals and had to foot the bill for their own costumes and lodging. In any case, actresses were presumed to be—all together now—common whores, and were expected to find a sugar daddy to help them along the way.

  Did Eva have one? Maybe? Probably? She certainly accepted the help of men with whom she would fall in and out of love and lust. When she married Juan Perón at the age of 26, she was no longer a virgin, so make of that what you will.

  At the beginning of her career, she barely scraped by. After Mrs. Perez, she landed a tiny part on a sci-fi radio show and emceed a tango contest. She also appeared in the traveling company of The Fatal Kiss, a cautionary tale about the ravages of syphilis, produced by the Prophylactic League of Argentina.

  Evita may not have been educated, or even particularly intelligent. But she was sensitive to the unspoken, unwritten rules about the way the world actually worked. Somewhere around 1937, she figured out that it would be good to have her name appear in Sintonía, a popular movie rag. She began showing up at the magazine office claiming she had an appointment with the editor. He refused to see her, and didn’t know why she was wasting her time and hoping to waste his. She came the next morning with the same story. She was cheerful, but persistent, determined to succeed, and the receptionist gave in and let her sit there. Sometimes, Eva would paint her nails. One day, a gossip columnist wondered aloud in his column what business the pretty young actress Eva Duarte (she always used her father’s name) had with the powerful editor in chief, thus linking her name with his—which had been her intention all along.

  Eva cozied up to a radio scriptwriter, who cast her in his next soap opera. Sintonía reported the news, calling her a “dynamic” actress. Most of what was written in movie magazines was completely bogus, but in this case dynamic might be an accurate euphemism for
Eva’s acting style, which verged on the hysterical.

  The radio market in Argentina was second to the United States in programming and listeners. Soap operas were the most popular, appealing as they did to the Argentine love of melodrama and tragedy. Writers hacked out a “chapter” in the morning, and the actors performed it in the afternoon. By 1943, at the age of 24, Eva had become a radio star with her own production company, assembled with the help of her brother, Juan, who worked in the soap manufacturing business and had secured Radical Soap as a guaranteed sponsor of her programs. She now made 6,000 pesos a month—more than any other radio soap opera actress—and moved into a chic apartment in Barrio Norte. Among her peers she was not especially well liked, but people found her to be reliable, and she was very good at the overemoting required of the genre. Little did the world know that pretty, dynamic Eva Duarte’s aptitude for the stagy and overwrought would change the course of world history.

  THE ARGENTINE POLITICAL SYSTEM is modeled on that of the United States, with executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The country also holds elections, which have a tendency to be fraudulent, and is subject to occasional military coups.

  Evita couldn’t have cared less about politics, and when there was a coup on June 4, 1943, what annoyed her most were the restrictions now placed on soap opera production. A guy from the military with no experience in radio or entertainment was placed in charge of regulating her shows, and seemed to pick his rules out of a hat. There were to be no more bugle calls or whistles, or people speaking in foreign languages. Scripts now had to be submitted for approval to the new Inspector for Posts and Telecommunications.