Feminism in Garbage

Representation in the media matters. The constant portrayal of average sized, middle aged, straight, white, men becomes a dull and inaccurate representation of the population as a whole. The media’s reliance on average white actors allows regular people to believe that the average white male is more important than others. Innovative shows like Parks and Recreation cast a diverse group of actors to accurately represent the government workers in a small town. The lead actress and producer of the show is a self-pronounced feminist that cannot be held down by her often unmotivated coworkers, and the patriarchy.

The feminist movement in Pawnee is still under way. An older councilman, Milton, the character that reminds you of that racist, sexist family member that you want to avoid during family events, still believes that women are frail and breakable like “light bulbs” or to Leslie’s dismay, his hips. He is one of the rickety old men that helps keep the misogynistic laws in place that prevent women from progressing  in Pawnee.  Leslie notes that she “still can’t reserve [a] conference room without [her] husband or father’s signature.”  Becoming a lawless feminist, Leslie uses the conference room without mention of  her father or husband; she ignores the antiquated patriarchal hold in Pawnee.

The episode is one of the many feminist episodes within the series but focuses on the disparity of women workers in the government. In season five’s “Women in Garbage,” Parks and Recreation tackles the idea of the lack of women in the “boys club” of government. Leslie decides to talk to someone who has been in her position before, she talks with a former councilwoman about her experience as a higher-ranking government official. Councilwoman, Paula Horke, recalls when the councilmen tracked her reproductive cycle in order to shoot down her ideas of it was ‘that time of the month’. Leslie, not having thought of this before, much like viewers of the show, began wondering if the men in her life were doing this to her, later to find out, they were.

Leslie, a self-pronounced feminist leader, is determined to set up a commission of gender equality to begin employing more women to the Pawnee government. She enlists the help of the city manager, Chris Traeger, and her coworker, April Ludgate, in order to create the commission. Chris, being a male, unaware of his privilege, set up a “sausage-fest”. Every attendee was a man. Yet, they were all thankful for the snacks placed by Leslie. Leslie, proud of the snacks she chose thanks the misogynists, but holds strong at the meeting, and attempts to distance herself from the ‘keep women in the kitchen’ message that the men were trying to convey. April and Leslie call out the gender inequality specifically in sanitation. The waste collector in attendance, Sanitation Steve, claims that they do have a woman working for them as their secretary, but their other secretary, Dan, is also a good secretary. Steve doesn’t let the woman working for them have a spotlight, he  feels it necessary to refer to her male counterpart to make it ‘equal’ for them, the men. Leslie and April challenge the garbage workers as to why there are no women working in garbage to hear the unsurprisingly that it is a  “very physically demanding job and many women can’t handle it.”

Leslie and April challenge the sanitation workers, deciding  to spend a day doing what they do. This is especially thrilling to April, a lover of all things disturbing and disorderly. She wants to “feed the beast” and go through trash because trash digging is America’s favorite pastime. The women complete a garbage route usually done by the men ahead of the scheduled time. When Steve  was asked about the women making better time, he responded with a grumbling whatever and “no comment” to the reporter with the resolve of a person who won’t admit that they are wrong. Following the grumbling, Leslie poses for a camera that clearly isn’t there, but quickly brushes it off and claims she’s posing for google earth, “it’s always taking pictures.” The representation of the garbage man is accurate of men in general.In my experience,  men can be egotistical, incessant people get angry and shameful when they can't brush off their loss of a given task.

Following the designated garbage route, Leslie and April are asked to move a commercial sized fridge onto a truck. Leslie, thinking it will be “easy breezy… beautiful” is sadly mistaken when she can’t move the fridge, even when she sneaks up on it. April’s suggestion of taking PCP to move the fridge won’t legally work either. Leslie fears that if the “feminist obstacle” isn’t moved, “feminism will be over” in Pawnee.  While watching this, I could only wonder how the fridge was moved outside of the bakery in the first place. If there was machinery to move the fridge out of the bakery, why wasn’t it used to move the fridge onto a truck to carry it away? Perhaps this was just me thinking too much into things.

Leslie uses the fridge as a symbol of her feminist goals for the city in order to bring equality to the various sectors of the government. She asks a soup kitchen to help move and take the fridge, as she finds out it is still  in working condition from the bakery owner.  The bakery owner also discloses through a bizarre animal metaphor that the “bears” of men couldn’t move the fridge onto the truck, (again how was it moved out of the bakery?). Leslie gathers a women-built team from the soup kitchen and is then able to move the feminist obstacle, saving feminism in Pawnee.

The only way to celebrate the victory of hiring women to the sanitation sector was a gift from the trash loving April, to Leslie, which not surprisingly, a gift wrapped box of garbage, just garbage, which possibly contained the used prescription strength deodorant of Stacey Noblock.