Season 1 Episode 6
In this episode, Abbi’s and Ilana went out to a bar, but Abbi lost her phone. They spent the next day running around the city trying to find it by tracking it. Ilana met a guy at the bar and was later invited to his comedy show. They hit it off really well, so she decides to bring Abbi and see what it’s all about. After the show, Abbi runs to where her phone is seen at, and she sees a woman from the bar who took her phone by accident. She confronts her and yells at this woman in front of a whole store of strangers and communicates her frustration. She expresses this verbally and physically without holding back. In this scenario, Abbi demonstrates a lot of masculine traits that resist feminine stereotypes. She is aggressive, confrontational, and her image as a woman is of no concern.
As Abbi confronts the woman who took her phone, Ilana goes to hook up with the man from the bar and comedy show. She thought his jokes were really bad and almost childlike. They get more intimate, but all that’s going through Ilana’s head is how unfunny this man is. She tells him, “You are so gorgeous and sexually skilled it’s scary, but your improv show was just not good”. He got very upset, but Ilana stood her ground and knew she didn’t want anything more to happen. I can’t think of another example where a woman says no to consentual sex in media. This resists several stereotypes of women and shows that Ilana is strong willed and not reliant on a man. Men are portrayed as more dominant in most romantic scenes, but the woman’s voice matters just as much.
Shared by: Meghan Lowery
Image Credit: https://www.vulture.com/2014/08/broad-city-season-1-episode-6-recap.html