History Series / MrsAmerica

The series starts in 1971 and the aftermath of the 1970 midterms when the Republican Party is in its weakest Congressional position since the height of the Great Depression. Schlafly gets brought in to help the party reorganize. A defense expert by trade, Schlafly gets embroiled in the fight against the ERA when she decides to run for Congress again. The party wants to give some sort of concession to the feminist movement (the ERA was officially introduced that same year) but Schlafly makes it her life's mission to stop it. The rest is history.

** InUniverse, this is (perhaps surprisingly) how we first meet Phyllis of all people. She is kitted out in nothing but a stars and stripes two piece swimsuit and a mega-watt smile while being paraded around in front a bunch of overwhelmingly male Republican party members at a fundraiser for Congressman Phil Crane. Crane himself does nothing to hide the fact that he enjoys the view, sleazily telling Phyllis to "please wear that" when they arrange to meet again, in front of his own wife no less.
** Gloria Steinem, [[SoBeautifulItsACurse to her chagrin]], is often made to feel she is reduced to this trope because of her looks. Even her accountant describes her as just someone with great legs in front of her peers and employees and co-workers at ''Ms.'' magazine.

* ShesGotLegs:
** Gloria is openly referred to by the press not only for her feminist beliefs but especially for her beauty and her long legs in miniskirts.
** The middle-aged (and mother of several children) Phyllis wears a curve-hugging stars and stripes two-piece swimsuit at a function for Phil Crane.

* AngryBlackMan: The talk that Eleanor's Bible Study group (who'd later join STOP ERA) have about the [[https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/nation/2015/05/21/attica-prison-riot-report/27724443/ Attica Prison Riots]] which comprised of Black and Brown inmates rioting after being denied healthcare and having been brutalized, Shirley Chisholm and Flo Kennedy supporting [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Davis#Arrest_and_trial Angela Davis]] (along with Gloria Steinem) smacks of this. This scene serves to show that the women (not even Alice) are as tolerant about race as they like to think they are and how far removed they are from the lives of people of color.

* TheFifties: The decade where Gloria's flashback to her abortion takes place, in London with floral wall paper with a dark background, conservative styles. Gloria has shorter hair albeit less product heavy and it's straight unlike the waves and curls of the decade (or [[https://www.smith.edu/gloria/ her own appearance in that decade]]).
* FiftiesHair: Gloria averts this in her flashback with chin length wavy and straight hair but Betty had this going on on her 1960s appearance on ''The Tonight Show'' wearing pearls and a [[TrueBlueFemininity blue cocktail dress]] with [[GracefulLadiesLikePurple violet floral print]]. The same episode shows Betty's research on Phyllis with a fake cover of her book ''A Choice Not An Echo'' with Phyllis with darker hair in a similar style. In general, most of the [[https://tomandlorenzo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Mrs-America-Episode-2-Gloria-FX-TV-Reviews-Costume-Analysis-Tom-Lorenzo-Site-TLO-44.jpg STOP ERA housewives]] have a take on those styles.
* TheSixties: When Betty Friedan wrote the book that Jill said "lit a match" for the Women's Movement and did talk show appearances and Phyllis wrote books for the Goldwater campaign and ran for congress.

* TheSeventies: The series runs throughout the whole decade with the 1972 Presidential campaign, the launch of Ms. Magazine and it's very disco party, RedScare, long hair, bouffants, bell-bottoms, long sideburns, afros.
* SeventiesHair: The bouffants and updos sported by Jill, Phyllis, Rosemary, and Shirley (along with the STOP ERA followers) that are holdovers from the 1960s, Gloria's and Alice's glossy long locks, Phil Crane's dry look, the girls' haircuts at the mother-daughter luncheon, the afros and cornrows of black feminists, Betty Friedan's shag cut, and a young college student's Dorothy Hamill cut. In general, most of the [[https://tomandlorenzo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Mrs-America-Episode-2-Gloria-FX-TV-Reviews-Costume-Analysis-Tom-Lorenzo-Site-TLO-43.jpg ERA feminists]] have these styles.
* TheEighties: The series ends during the 1980 Presidential election and Ronald Reagan's win.
* EightiesHair: "Reagan" which opens up in 1979 and ends in the early 1980s, shows Rosemary with tight curls and Phyllis with a frizzy brown wig while Jill's and Gloria's hair maintain their 60s-70s style but more updated with some feathering.
* AbusiveParents: Phyllis to the closeted John and the aquaphobic Anne, even forcibly pulling the girl by her wrist to go swimming.
* AbsurdlyYouthfulMother: The young looking Alice who has two daughters (one teenager and and another a preteen) and a young adult son who gets married in "Betty" and gives her two grandsons by 1979. Justified as Alice was likely in her early 20s when she had him (she married at 19) and he's around the same age as John Schlafly; it seems to be a familial trait as her mother is north of middle age and nearing senior citizen status in "Houston" and is a great-grandmother and it's implied they lost Alice's grandmother by 1977.

* BlondeRepublicanSexKitten: Phyllis (as played by Creator/CateBlanchett) is a constrained and prim version of this trope and her followers take up the same image as her, playing down their sexuality and appearing prim. In contrast, the women in the Women's Liberation Movement made more room for diversity of fashion and looks, from the conservative and professional Shirley Chisholm, Gloria Steinem's famous casual clothes that showcase her beauty, the Republican Jill as a slightly hipper version of Phyllis and her gang, Betty Friedan's stylish (albeit not as conventionally attractive as Gloria nor Phyllis) look, and Bella Abzug and her NiceHat collection.

* NiceHat:
** Bella Abzug, like in real-life, was seen wearing different hats to go with her clothing.
** Flo Kennedy is seen wearing snappy cowboy hats.

* {{Meganekko}}: On both sides Gloria, Margaret, and Rosemary, who are attractive women (with the press focusing more on the former) and both wear glasses.

* DramaticIrony: Bella's insistence that McGovern is the "electable" choice over Shirley Chisholm in Episode 3 [[note]] for those who don't know, McGovern lost the 1972 election to Richard Nixon in a landslide, winning the electoral votes of only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia [[/note]].

* OnlySaneMan: Kind, thoughtful Alice in STOP ERA, surrounded by the hypocritical and often cruel Phyllis and the power-hungry Rosemary Thompson and their AlphaBitch behaviors, racist members, unimaginative allies (the "Women Who Want to Be Women" group from Texas), and the impressionable and abused Pamela for whom she acts as a ally.
* OutnumberedSibling: Two in the Schlafly family as there are four sons and two daughters.

** Phyllis's strenuous efforts to destroy the chances of the ERA getting passed end up serving to strangle any hopes she might have had of future career advancement in the administration of Ronald Reagan. Which works on several levels; she views getting the ERA binned as a stepping stone to future political power, but her efforts to do so completely alienate the women the Republican Party depends on for electoral success, meaning the party has to cut her loose; her determination to smother an amendment to ensure equal working rights legitimises the sexism which the men she's competing with use to ignore and dismiss her; the increasingly liberal, moderate and open Republican Party she hates and works so hard to undermine and replace would have allowed her greater opportunity for the career advancement she craves; and her own actions mean she's completely loathed by the feminist movement which she could have turned to as an ally against such arguably unjust treatment. Furthermore, the [=ERA=] was never really her priority or main interest to begin with; her area of expertise was foreign relations, and she somewhat cynically intended to use the anti-[=ERA=] campaign as a stepping-stone to higher political and governmental office. However, thanks to all the above, it became the main thing she was ever known for.

** Phyllis's strenuous efforts to destroy the chances of the ERA getting passed end up serving to strangle any hopes she might have had of future career advancement in the administration of Ronald Reagan. Which works on several levels; she views getting the ERA binned as a stepping stone to future political power, but her efforts to do so completely alienate the women the Republican Party depends on for electoral success, meaning the party has to cut her loose; her determination to smother an amendment to ensure equal working rights legitimises the sexism which the men she's competing with use to ignore and dismiss her; the increasingly liberal, moderate and open Republican Party she hates and works so hard to undermine and replace would have allowed her greater opportunity for the career advancement she craves; and her own actions mean she's completely loathed by the feminist movement which she could have turned to as an ally against such arguably unjust treatment.

** In "Phyllis & Fred & Brenda & Marc", Fred does this after Phyllis gets angry at him for not speaking up for her when Brenda points out that Phyllis made up a court case for the sake of fear-mongering and that in a court of law she needs to cite a case. Fred (a lawyer himself) happens to agree with Brenda.

* YiddishAsASecondLanguage: Betty and Bella pepper their speech with Yiddish words. The gentile Jill picks up a few phrases, to the amusement of the other ERA feminists; as in RealLife most of the women at the National Women's Political Caucus and at the head of the feminist movement came from Jewish backgrounds (Bella, Brenda, Betty, Gloria), and it contrasts with the conservative Christian STOP ERA led by Phyllis.

* JewsLoveToArgue: Within the feminist movement, the Jewish members are [[https://jwa.org/people/friedan-betty Betty Friedan]], [[https://jwa.org/people/steinem-gloria Gloria Steinem]], [[https://www.kveller.com/mrs-america-jewish-feminists-fought-for-equal-rights/ Brenda Feigen]], and [[https://jwa.org/people/abzug-bella Bella Abzug]], who often engage in conflicting discussions, light-hearted or heated. In "Bella" Gloria and Bella have a loud discussion at ''Ms.'' and when Gloria's money guy asks them to stop arguing, Gloria tells him that it's a New York thing, to which the Italian American Midge snarks in response, "the West Side of New York City."
* JewishMother: Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug were both of Jewish descent in real life and mothers. The episode "Betty" features Betty as a woman who is both progressive and had internalized the sexist attitudes that STOP ERA holds so dear, scolding her teenage daughter for wearing an outfit that is deemed too revealing and feeling insecure about her looks in comparison to younger and prettier women like Gloria Steinem and her ex-husband's new and young wife. Bella jokes about how it's time for her and Martin's daughters to "give us grandkids".

** The end credits of "Reagan" reveal that Brenda Feigen, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, and Flo Kennedy looked okay but were nowhere on the level of Ari Graynor, Uzo Aduba, Margo Martindale, or Niecy Nash.

** While Brenda Feigen eventually came out as bisexual and married a woman later in life, she didn't sleep with another woman while married to Marc.

* ParentsAsPeople: Both sides. Phyllis, Alice, Pamela, Rosemary, Bella, Jill, Brenda (eventually), Lottie Beth, and Betty are all mothers or noted to be mothers (even a few grandmothers) but the series spends more time outside of their maternal roles or even their relationships to explore their own arcs outside of their families.

* RealityEnsues:
** Phyllis is a very intelligent woman, but by episode five she’s not a lawyer yet. She gets clobbered the first time she debates an actual lawyer. She makes up a case out of thin air about a father getting custody of the kids while the mother has to pay child support after their divorce. Brenda sees through it and asks her to cite the case. She can’t do it. Brenda points out that in a real courtroom, you can’t do that. Fred tells her later that he didn’t defend her because Brenda was right.
** In "Houston", Alice tells a news reporter that a majority of people in the United States oppose the ERA but the reporter tells her all the polls say that a majority of Americans support it. Given that Alice has been only in Phyllis's orbit and has only been consuming their propaganda, it was likely.

-->'''--Phyllis Schlafly'''

** Brenda finds out she is pregnant [[ADayInTheLimelight in her episode]] and when she panics it's not the right time, Marc lets her know that their friends [[HappilyMarried Marty and Ruth Ginsberg]] say "it's never the right time" and later she tells Gloria she has always wanted to be a mom.

* TheBabyTrap: Part of Pamela's abuse from her husband is that she gets pregnant over and over so she'd stay home and be dependent on him.

** Her husband Bill as well, as her affiliation with the ERA has threatened him with the Reaganites, and in RealLife, just like his wife, he's become disillusioned with the GOP and voted for Clinton in 2016.

** "Phyllis & Fred & Brenda & Marc" show a messier example with Marc and Brenda; they are very mutually supportive, share a similar sense of humor, have mutual affection and respect for each other, get along, and work towards a common goal, but Brenda is struggling with her bisexuality and [[YourCheatingHeart even sees another woman]].

* YourCheatingHeart: The married Brenda in "Phyllis & Fred & Brenda & Marc" has a one-night stand with Jules, a photographer. Marc figures this out after making love that she slept with someone only to relax once he discovers it's a woman as "it's a rite of passage for every radical feminist."

** "Phyllis & Fred & Brenda & Marc" show a messier example with Marc and Brenda; they are very mutually supportive, share a similar sense of humor, have mutual affection and respect for each other, get along, and work towards a common goal, but Brenda is struggling with [[UsefulNotes/{{Bisexual}} her sexuality]] and [[YourCheatingHeart even sees another woman]].

The rest of the main cast is rounded out by Creator/RoseByrne as ERA proponent/feminist activist Gloria Steinem, Uzo Aduba as Representative Shirley Chisholm (the first black woman ever elected to Congress), and Creator/ElizabethBanks as Republican ERA supporter Jill Ruckelshaus.

* Critical Research Failure: The show portrays a real-life debate between Phyllis Schlafly and Brenda Feigen Fasteau. However, Schlafly never made up a court case in the debate. In reality, Fasteau was caught fabricating facts (she claimed lending institutions were requiring women to show proof they had been sterilized but could not cite one example) and was called on it by Fred Schlafly, as well as the television host.