Roseanne’s period is 9 days late
ROSEANNE (1988-1997). as a result of PIV-centric sexuality, roseanne has a “pregnancy scare” in S3E01: her period is a full 9. days. late. and she has only been “late” before 3 times in her entire life: when she was pregnant before with each of her 3 kids. in this episode, we learn that third child “DJ” was unplanned, and its probably fair to assume that her first child was too. we know from a later episode that roseanne and dan have been together since roseanne was 15 years old.
this episode was notable, and memorable, partially because of its interesting creative concept: it was announced that “the test” would take 10 minutes to perform, and we are made to wait it out in real time with roseanne and her family, as they discuss and ruminate over the possibility of an unplanned pregnancy. of course, this isnt a happy moment for roseanne and she stresses over whether or not and how to tell dan about it; the physical and emotional toll of gestating a fetus and caring for an infant; and whether or not she should have her “tubes tied” to prevent this happening again.
dan asks the standard misogynist, woman-blaming questions about how dare her fuckhole turn out to be an organ that, you know, does stuff. (ie. “how did this happen?”) and there is some serious stress there, family-wide as her 3 existing children contemplate — and complain about — the implications of adding another child to their rowdy, working class home. dan and roseanne both note that they arent “young anymore” and briefly mention vasectomy for dan in a joking way, as if its not a realistic option. strangely, in the context of an unintentional pregnancy and the difficulties to the entire family of bearing and raising an unplanned-for fourth child, jackie and crystal (roseannes sister and best friend, respectively) both start to contemplate their own ticking “biological clocks.” huh?
watch the entire episode below.
goal is to “land a man”. yes. jackie is a serial dater and has “slept with every guy in town.” roseanne dated dan when they were both high school students and she “landed” him immediately, when they were both very young. obviously, she had no other plans or something, or put them all aside when she met the man she wanted. both her daughters appear to be following in her footsteps in that regard, and have serious boyfriends (and husbands) at young ages, although darlene does at least attend college for a period of time.
normalizing reproductive stress and pain. yes. jackie, crystal and roseanne all have unintended pregnancies and pregnancy scares. they also bond over roseanne’s pregnancy test and at other times, when faced with unwanted pregnancies. jackie and her eventual husband fred have unsatisfying sex.
pathologizing menstruation. yes. in one memorable episode, roseanne attempts to tell DJ a story about having an embarrassing “accident” with her first period, and DJ screams and runs out of the room and up the stairs. dan stops him and asks him whats the matter and why hes is carrying on, and DJ tells him that roseanne was telling him about her period. dan responds “carry on” and DJ completes his dash up the steps. in another episode, roseanne has PMS and the entire show revolves around it, highlighting her violent mood swings and increased libido (because who wants a woman who actually desires some of the PIV shes always having? amiright?)
pathologizing older women and menopause/fetishizing female youth. yes. evil mother-in-law meme. roseanne and jackies mother is a horrible shrew, and their grandmother is crazy/eccentric. in a later episode we learn that dan’s mother is actually “mentally ill” and is institutionalized for this many times throughout her life. there is no critique of what constitutes “mental illness” for women under patriarchy.
normalizing simulated/exaggerated female pleasure from PIV and PIV-centric sex. yes. jackie is “promiscuous” and a serial dater. when she is unintentionally impregnated by her future husband fred, in order to shock her mother (and possibly kill her) she tells her mother that she went out with a man she barely knew, they had “sex” for hours, and she got pregnant. (she also mentions that shes keeping the baby, and if its a girl shes naming it “gidget.”) hours? really? that sounds painful. actually, maybe thats why they removed the rubber, ay? just thinking out loud here.
rape and rape culture. yes. jackie routinely “picks up men” in bars, and in one episode she “wakes up next to” arnie, a disgusting loser than no woman in her right mind would *ever* intentionally have sex with, after a night of drinking. aka. rape. also, roseanne, jackie, and roseannes daughters becky and darlene all apparently have or had “underage sex.” i dont know the statutory rape laws in illinois, but “teenage sexuality” counts here mkay? especially when we are so obviously talking about PIV, and we obviously are, when we are dealing with “the talk” as well as being taken to the clinic for hormonal birth control, as becky was. women also have to get out of dans way when hes mad, and hes known to be violent on occasion.
rating: 6/6
here are parts 1, 2 and 3 of the pregnancy scare episode “the test” in its entirety:
What disappointed me about “Roseanne” — which I loved for many years due to its new-to-TV take on class and gender, if not race — was the fact that Darlene got stuck in Lanford, pregnant and married by the age of 20. She was the one who was supposed to get out and have a different sort of life; one with more texture and real choices.
August 3, 2011 at 1:39 pm
yes. and do you remember what roseanne said about all this? dan was concerned about it and said “darlene was the one that was supposed to make it.” roseanne said “oh she’ll still make it, dan, she’ll just do it with bags under her eyes and cheerios in her hair.” but thats pretty dishonest isnt it? overtired and stressed, with childcare responsibilities and ungroomed to boot…thats not a recipe for any kind of success in the male-centric workplace. darlenes chances of “making it” were in reality drastically lowered by the fact of her early pregnancy and marriage. and it was clear what they meant, when they said “making it” too — money and success in the male-centric workplace.
what i did appreciate about roseanne though is that she let her daughters come back to live with the family when they needed to, and she made it clear that they always had a place to go if they needed it. the female-centric support-system is so important and gives women the choice to say NO to unwanted PIV, where they so often do NOT have a meaningful choice in this area, because the men would leave or threaten to leave if the woman changed her mind about this. and women are so often dependent on the man and the continuation of the partership for the majority of her support, including financial support but emotional and social too, if shes alienated her family for him or moved to another town. its so telling that this is so often exactly whats expected of women, and exactly what women do. how often does a man “move” to be with a woman, or move across the country because she got a job, etc etc? how much credit and giant pats on the back would he get for making this huge sacrifice, if he actually did do it? thats what i thought. for women to do this is just completely expected, and its BECAUSE cutting us off from support is critical to maintaining the culture of PIV-centrism and male-defined sex.
August 3, 2011 at 1:51 pm
“you’ve made your bed, so you lie in it” is what generations of mothers have been telling their daughters
August 3, 2011 at 1:58 pm
Yes, and we did not make our beds at all, the bloody patriarchy did. Mothers tell so many lies, sigh. I suppose they want to tell their daughters something positive.
August 3, 2011 at 5:17 pm
FCM, you’re right, I do remember that. And it was definitely dishonest.
The relationship I hated most on “Roseanne” was Becky and Mark. He was an insensitive oaf at best; an emotional abuser at worst — and Becky just didn’t or wouldn’t see it.
August 3, 2011 at 10:43 pm
I enjoyed some later episodes of Roseanne because there seemed to be a bit of an awakening in the title character about how patriarchy keeps women down. Also, she tried to talk Becky into pursuing college rather than staying in a trailer with Mark and having babies like she did with Dan. Of course, Becky and Darlene end up in the shitter anyway: stuck with men and kids. All in all, the show was very patriarchal, yet I did see a slight glimmer of sense in the moments the women got fed up with all the crap they went through.
August 4, 2011 at 5:51 pm
I was really excited to hear about this blog, like made my day kind of excitement. So far I have not been disappointed. I’ve only seen a couple episodes of Roseanne (I’m 16, so I didn’t exactly grow up with the show), but one of the other things that bothered me, especially as a female ARA was the pathologizing and minimizing of Darlene’s activism and beliefs about meat and animal rights.
August 4, 2011 at 11:21 pm
One interesting aspect of Roseanne is the double-speak. Roseanne doesn’t want to admit that she wanted other things and could have gone on to do other things if she hadn’t gotten pregnant with them and hadn’t married Dan, but the best chance she could have given her girls to turn out differently would be to do just that. Working class and poor women are in a bind because the class system is always telling them that they aren’t good enough, and they want to counter that by instilling a sense of pride in what they do have, and along with that pride is a scorn for what they don’t.
Roseanne is kind of damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t about telling her kids the truth about how disappointing the circumstances are because if she admits her life is underwhelming and she’s stuck then that carries the implicit message that she’s stuck because of them and that their upbringing is something sad or shameful. She’s damned the other way because not telling them just leads to another generation doing the same thing and not realizing until it’s too late to warn their kids. The truth of the matter is the majority of people are the living, breathing evidence of the patriarchy’s successful efforts to hobble the efforts of their mothers. If PIV is largely unwanted but perpetuated by varying degrees of force, then that makes the fruits of such labors just as largely unwanted and evidence of the same varying degrees of force. In a similar but not identical way, if success means being financially secure and getting out of an economic wasteland like Lanford, then being born and raised there is a mark of failure right on your head.
The similar but still different situations with the daughters was a great example of this conflict. While on one hand they were glad that Darlene was on the path to prosperity, on the other hand they were resentful of her getting out. Dan wasn’t nearly resentful enough to be happy when she got pregnant, but there was an episode where he was going off on her and yelling at her for making light-hearted jokes about Lanford because he felt that her attending college made anything she had to say about their lives an outsider attack.
Another example that showed Roseanne and Dan having different opinions on their daughters futures was with Becky. Becky had always done well in school, but she ran off and got pregnant by and married to Mark, who is as dim as he is mean-spirited. After having a party at the couple’s newly-acquired trailer to make Becky feel even more ashamed of the meager living quarters than she already was, they talked her into going back to school. She decided that sounded great and was thinking of leaving Mark, who honestly was holding her back. After realizing that if she became a doctor she would have no need of him, Mark got drunk and hurt his hand punching a wall in a bar and told Dan about how upset he was, and Dan got all “what about Mark!?” with Roseanne. Roseanne then walked it back and essentially said “you took what I said the wrong way; you don’t have to leave your husband, let’s not get crazy here.”
Even women that really get how badly men and babies can ruin young women’s lives often choke when it comes to taking that all the way to the conclusion that they would be well-served not to have them around. They can take the argument all the way down to “you should put it off” or “you should only settle if they don’t beat you” but they feel it necessary to stop short of “you should find a hobby that can’t rape you.”
October 9, 2011 at 6:09 am
hello!
yes great points about roseanne. and its so true, women are emotionally blackmailed when it comes to their role in childbearing. forcing us to be “good mothers” and backing up this expectation with force and threats of force via the male legal and medical machines, the one thing mothers can never do is tell their children the truth about the negative consequences of PIV, including rape and unwanted or ambivalent pregnancies, and the impact of compulsory heterosex and of having men around at all. this subject is completely taboo. i might do a post about that actually, its really something to think about. thanks for reading!
October 12, 2011 at 5:19 pm