Minx Nails What It’s Like to Be a Woman in Media
We haven't come as far as we'd like.
Photo Courtesy of HBO Max
There’s a moment in Episode 7 of HBO Max’s excellent new comedy Minx in which earnest magazine editor Joyce Prigger (Ophelia Lovibond) sits behind her desk at Bottom Dollar Publications—a publisher of pornography run by Jake Johnson’s Doug Renetti—and opens a stack of mail. In letter after letter, she’s subjected to angry, explicit tirades (which are shockingly free of typos) about how women like her are ruining the country. The series is set in the 1970s, but if you swap out the handwritten letters for emails, tweets, forums, and other forms of online communication, it’d be indistinguishable from today’s media industry.
Created by Ellen Rapoport, Minx is an energetic and fun new comedy that follows a determined Joyce as she pitches, launches, and eventually begins putting out issues of the titular magazine, the first erotic publication geared toward women. Though it’s not what she initially envisioned—she wanted to publish a radical feminist mag dubbed The Matriarchy Awakens—Doug is the only person who sees potential in Joyce’s ideas. Unsurprisingly, there are a number of speed bumps that make getting the magazine off the ground a struggle, but once the world becomes aware of Minx and begins paying attention to it (and to its editor-in-chief), then the real obstacles arise.
Joyce is in no way prepared for the wave of criticism that quickly comes her way. Not only do various members of the SoCal community, from vocal feminists at a local college to a prim city councilwoman determined to clean up the San Fernando Valley, find fault with the magazine’s content, but a male journalist then twists her words—causing major backlash once the story is picked up by papers across the country. Eventually, a pair of obnoxious male chauvinists cover the magazine on their morning radio show (which has a national audience, of course), adding fuel to the fire, and the hate mail starts to roll in.
“What a tw— you are! You need a good c— slap with a pair of sweaty balls!” reads one letter. “What a crap pile of drivel you have created. Little prick ladies like you are destroying our great country! Get back in the kitchen, spread your legs, and f— off!” that same letter continues. Meanwhile, another opens with a death threat, because God forbid a woman publish a boundary-pushing feminist magazine for other women. God forbid a woman’s desire be treated just as important as a man’s.
But as Joyce reads the misogynistic vitriol, the rest of the Bottom Dollar staff celebrate loudly in the background of the scene. Minx is now selling out in several major cities. It’s a sharp juxtaposition of narrative elements, and it’s also a pointed commentary on society’s frequent disregard for and ignorance of the everyday harassment that many women face just for doing their jobs, as well as the loneliness and sense of abandonment they often feel when it happens.