Cautionary Tales of Liberation and Female Professionalism: The Case Against Ally McBeal

This paper explores the relationship between female professional identity and cultural associations between femininity and the body, emotion and sexuality. The intersection(s) of existing professional discourses with social and theoretical discourses of the body render recent postfeminist and third-wave feminist discourses, especially as they have been deployed and co-opted by the media, particularly problematic for women professionals. Against this complex theoretical and social background the television series, Ally McBeal, as exemplified by the episode 'It's My Party', operates as a useful case study of the dangers that the co-optation of contemporary feminist discourse(s) poses for professional women.