Odd Mom Out Takes on Ivanka-Esque Faux Feminism

With Carrie Bradshaw and Hannah Horvath in retirement, Jill Weber of Bravo’s Odd Mom Out has ascended to her rightful place as the pre-eminent New York social diarist on television. The brainchild of creator, writer, and executive producer Jill Kargman, who also plays the leather harness-clad goth mom on the cult cable hit, Jill has given us three seasons of wack Upper East Side trend-spotting, from status cemetery plots to the social warfare that is the kindergarten admissions process. It’s only fitting, then, that in season three, which airs its second episode tonight, Odd Mom Out trains its keen satirical eye on a distinct cultural issue of the Trump times: Ivanka-esque faux feminism.

The vessel for this hilarious yet all-too-true plotline is Jill’s sister-in-law, socialite–turned–handbag designer Brooke Von Weber (played to perfection by Abby Elliot), one of the only people standing after a Bernie Madoff–like Ponzi scheme fells the Upper East Side’s bank accounts. (For shame—some people even had to relinquish their art advisers!) Rising like a phoenix in a powder pink power suit, Brooke concludes that her best branding move in this time of crisis would be to pay it forward with an initiative to empower—or as she calls it, empow-her—underprivileged women.

“Women don’t need a handout; they need a hand up,” she says in her eureka moment. “Give an impoverished woman a bag, so they have a bag for a day. But teach that woman to make a bag? Well, she can eat forever!”

Never mind that Brooke is painfully out of touch: Her empow-her initiative, through which Indian women will make her high-end bags, all but amounts to slave labor, but it’s all about optics. Brooke is the kind of feminist from afar who only “symbolically” did the Women’s March and who is merely launching this initiative out of self-interest. “This is my chance to prove that I am an insp-her-ation, a lead-her, and above all, a give-her,” she says in next week’s episode.

A wealthy New York handbag designer spouting handy “feminist” catchphrases to further her brand . . . sound familiar? Whether this was intentional shade in Ivanka Trump’s direction (Kargman is an outspoken Trump critic on Twitter) or just more eye-rolling at the abuse of the word “empower”—the same word Kim Kardashian West has used to describe her nude selfies—with respect to so-called feminism, Brooke’s branding scheme smacked as mighty similar to a scene from a recent New York Times profile of Ivanka Trump. It describes how, in 2013, Trump, her husband, Jared Kushner, and a cohort of employees huddled around a whiteboard brainstorming a “catchy yet accessible slogan” that would make Ms. Trump and her eponymous fashion and accessories brand more friendly to the mass market. They settled, as we all well know, on #WomenWhoWork and, according to the Times, swiftly “set about tailoring her image to fit the concept.”

Odd Mom Out wrapped its third season before that New York Times article dropped, making its viewpoint all the more prescient. It’s become trendy to adopt the mantle of women’s empowerment (ahem, empow-her-ment) for the benefit of one’s personal brand, spouting buzzwords when, in fact, there’s no substance behind them—kind of like purporting to be an “advocate for the empowerment of women and girls,” as Trump’s Twitter bio touts, while working as a key adviser for a president who supports defunding Planned Parenthood, has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault, and openly lambasts women’s appearances on Twitter. Odd Mom Out nails the hypocrisy of faux feminism as perfectly as it has crunchy, Brooklyn-style parenting. Brooke launching an “empowerment” initiative for ostensible slave labor says it all: It’s only empowerment if it translates to women wielding actual power.

Odd Mom Out also deserves props for finding a way to somehow make this feminist cluster fuck funny. On next week’s episode, a continuation of the empow-her-ment plot, Brooke tells Vanity Fair’s Derek Blasberg (in a cameo appearance) that, when in the Hamptons, she “actively supports efforts to eradicate female sea sickness on yachts.” But Blasberg does her one better. “I heard Tory Burch is starting a foundation to empower gold diggers to stand up to their oppressors and divorce their husbands,” he says, earnestly. “It’s called Melania’s Tower.”Read more at:bridesmaid dresses australia | queenieau.com