Media Watch
Does the Media Really do Right by Lady Cops?
by Hal Brown, LICSW
Looks don't count for much when you call for back-up and it's Joe or Jane who responds. But, go figure, on television and in the movies, only male cops have moved beyond those early portrayals of all police officers cast in the glamour mold of Hollywood. For our celluloid men in blue, it isn't even brains, beauty and brawn that count. A male cop on the tube or movie screen only has to out-smart the bad guys.
Screenwriter tell a different story when it comes to lady cops. Sure, the answer to TV Guides question, "Can Lady Cops Really do the Job" is a resounding yes. But, only it would seem if they have both brains and beauty. Aside from the so-called reality shows like COPS, where female officers look, well, normal, all of the primary female roles of female cops go to women who are, well, strikingly beautiful in one way or another. Look at the women on Homicide, NYPD Blue and Law and Order. Just like your next door neighbor, right? Well, perhaps if you lived in Beverly Hills.
Male cops on television can be "hunks", of course, and there aren't any shows that don't have a few. Though the newly popular Martial Law stars an actor who, nimble and smart as he is, is hardly the next Jimmy Smits in the heart throb department. Unless I've missed someone, there are no, zilch, zero, females in lead roles who are anything less than semi-gorgeous. (Don't suggest Angela Laingsbury in Murder She Wrote. She's not a cop and was, in fact, something of a babe in her younger days anyway.)
The only area of television that has made any significant strides to overcome this obsession with female appearance is the news, where a number of female reporters who are less than cover girls (some having jumped from National Public Radio to the small screen) have major assignments.
The media moguls, most of whom are male, will only really "get it" when they start casting female equivalents of Dennis Franz, our own beloved Andy Sippowitz, in leading roles in police dramas.
