What if real women need babies? (On Kate’s “finest hour” in Lost season five)

A while back, I wrote the post “What if Lost time travelled to a feminist future,” noting that:

While Kate is back-tracking into the “problem that has no name” this season (re: Betty Friedan), Sun’s presence in season 5 could be hurtling towards a more feminist future. Unmoored from dad and husband, I am looking forward to where this season takes her.

Perhaps this season the show will break with the rather normative way it has presented gender thus far, with females being framed in relation to males and/or to their children (or desire for them).

Well, the season is not taking Sun in the direction I had hoped. Her character has been shoved to the background and, when she is focused on, she is ALL about finding her man.

The other lead females are similarly framed with the Kate/Sawyer/Jack triangle turning into a quad with the addition of Julia. And, on last nights episode (April 1), Kate and Julia teamed up to save a child. How mommy-esque! Problem is, this child they are saving is Ben Linus! Are their lady parts pushing them into maternal mode at the expense of rational thought? This is what the narrative seems to ask us to believe – that they have both forgotten who Ben is and what havoc he wreaks – that all they can focus on is “save the child.” I could not suspend my disbelief to swallow that one. I think the writers made a big gaff here – and a very traditionally gendered (re: sexist) one. If any character would save Ben it would be Jack – the softy surgeon dude with a supposed heart of gold – not the pragmatic Julia or the no-nonsense Kate.

Framing Kate’s decision in relation to her backstory made matters even worse. Drawing on the Freudian “baby as penis replacement” motif, Kate is depicted as trying to repare the great rift losing Sawyer brought about in her life with baby-love. As she coos to this child in his car seat and sings soppily as she cradles him, she seemed very out of character. Shortly after seeing her in ultra-mommy mode, Kate and Cassidy discuss Sawyer supposedly breaking her heart and Cassidy insists Kate “needed” Aron to replace Sawyer. She says “You needed him. Sawyer broke your heart. How else were you supposed to fix it?” Go with the Freudian analysis Cassidy! Replace that penis with a baby, that will fix all your problems!

While Jennifer Godwin refers to last night’s show as “Kate’s Finest Hour,” I think it was the hour I was MOST disappointed in her. I, unlike Godwin, don’t revel in the depiction of Kate as a “full-grown mama lion” – in fact, I take issue with the implicit claim such a description entails – that, in order for her to be the “profoundly magnanimous woman” Godwin claims she has become, she “left behind her selfish, childish petulance” to “become … a wildly competent mother.” Uh, why do none of the childish men have to ‘become men’ via parenthood? Why does it take a baby to make Kate a ‘real woman’? Could this be any more horribly dated and backwards-ass-traditionally-gendered-in-the-worst-way? Yes, let’s throw her in a tight short skirt and ultra high heels, make her run frantically through a grocery store searching for her lost toddler, THEN let’s have her do the whole streaming tears shtick over the sleeping child before showing emotional vulnerability with her “Bye Bye Baby” parting line. Yeah, THAT is what makes here a “magnanimous woman” NOT her bravery, indepedence, strength, courage, and bad-ass island-saving skills. Put her in heels and make her a mommy – finest hour my ass.