"Why is she so angry?" (a Minx appreciation post)
I started watching Minx, a new HBO Max series about the launch of a feminist erotic magazine in the early 70s, mostly because I love Jake Johnson (RIP Stumptown) and I’m an eternal sucker for literally anything about the publishing industry. What I didn’t expect going in was how damn smart it was going to be about hiding its pill in the peanut butter, to borrow a phrase from the trailer.
It’s 1970s Los Angeles and Vassar-educated Joyce has desperately been trying to get someone to publish The Matriarchy Awakens pretty much her entire life. The only problem is, all the people with power are wealthy white men and none of them want to hear about equality for women. Where’s the article on how ladies can stay slim while keeping their men well-fed? Or makeup tips for the busy gal? It doesn’t help matters that Joyce is so over-educated that she can’t fathom why someone doesn’t immediately understand why a headline about “contretemps” isn’t enticing (or even intelligible). Seriously, I graduated college when I was 19 and I’m not even sure I could use “contretemps” correctly in a sentence.
Eventually, Joyce meets Doug, whose Bottom Dollar Publishing has 12 different porno mags on racks at the moment. He thinks Joyce is onto something, but is also savvy enough to recognize why she hasn’t gotten anywhere yet. Feminism is the pill, and the peanut butter to make it more palatable is, as he so eloquently puts it, dongs. And so the duo set out to launch Minx, porn for ladies of high breeding and class.
It’s a great show, with fun characters and amusing hijinks, including a phenomenal turn by Lennon Parham as Joyce’s sister Shelley. But under the wide collars and genuinely hilarious attempts at writing a dildo ad aimed at women lies the show’s truth. So much of what happens in this period piece (it’s set 50ish years ago, let’s recall) is still happening. You could copy/paste far too much dialog from Minx and set it in a modern show and nobody would be able to tell the difference. Issues of racism, classism, the oppression of women (especially when it comes to sex of any kind), the hypocrisy of…well, anyone in power, really, but especially politicians — it’s all there and instantly recognizable.
Joyce is one of those nice upper-class white girls, you know the kind. The one that doesn’t overtly think she’s better than anyone…but absolutely thinks she is because that’s what’s she’s been led to believe. She comes from a world where a pristine sheen of propriety just barely covers the bullshit. Where nobody complains about the handsy guy running the country club because they don’t want to lose their tennis privileges or worse, be talked about. Doug and his team, meanwhile, have long since lost any illusions about the way the world works, but that is one of the few ways in which they’re different from Joyce. They’re just as smart, just as hardworking, just as aspirational. They just happen to sell magazines full of naked women without pretending it’s about the articles.
The “honest pornographer” trope certainly isn’t new, nor is exploring the sexual repression of WASPs. But Minx steps outside expectations by not cranking up the sexual tension between Doug and Joyce, using their relationship to instead explore the differences in class, gender, and agency play in the business world. The supporting cast provides the funny side action — a bit more peanut butter for the pill.
That we’re still having pretty much the exact same arguments about equality makes Minx even more worth your while. It likely won’t convert anyone who doesn’t already agree with the idea that women should be treated like human beings and that yes, sex workers are worthy of dignity, too, but it’s at least a reminder that the fight is righteous.
Also, there’s a whole lot of (prosthetic) ween wagging around, which is a nice change of pace.