This article brought to you by popular demand: Not one but two friends of mine, readers, thinkers and women, found time to sit me down and ask, “Have you read Susan Douglas’ new book? She’s local, right? Would that be something you could do a story on?” In four years of writing about books, this has never-not-once happened (well, at least not by someone who didn’t actually write the book), but the truth is that I didn’t need that statistical anomaly to convince me that it was worth a read.

Douglas’ 1995 book “Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media” and I arrived on the University of Michigan’s campus together (Douglas herself came here to teach in 1996), and its smart, hilarious and completely unsparing analysis of the canon of female television characters since the dawn of that medium radically altered the landscape of my consciousness.

So I knew that her “Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism’s Work Is Done” was going to be insightful and funny. What I was not prepared for was the sense of relief I felt while reading it, a long, slow exhalation of a breath I didn’t know I was holding that was, I think, the sensation that sent my friends running to spread the good word.

Being raised after “women’s lib,” when supposedly all the gender-based barriers to success are teetering on the last vestiges of fossilized institutionalism, has produced a cognitive dissonance over the years that rears its head in strange conundrums: Why is it only when I rail against the volunteer-exploitation phenomenon of “Girls Gone Wild” that I find guys defending women’s “sexual agency”? How did I get every A and please every boss only to find my career path severely truncated when I became a single mother? And why am I, a feminist with back problems, spending a day or two every month lying on the floor because I’ve darn near crippled myself by insisting on wearing those cute heels to the office? As Douglas says on page 4, “Something’s out of whack here.”

That something, in a sentence, is that we’re all acting like full equality between the genders arrived sometime during the last century when in fact nothing of the sort happened. It’s a misconstruction of the truth that has something in it for everybody: Ladies, as long as any lingering inability to get ahead is purely a personal problem, that means it has a personal solution and we can stop this bone-wearying, guilt-schlepping, never-ending slog against The Man. And gentlemen, yes, you might have conceded defeat on a few levels, but your wife just doubled the family income and besides, now all women can stop this joke-killing, landmine-infested slog against you. Douglas calls this worldview “embedded feminism,” and its victories are real.

They’re just not the whole story. Douglas writes, “Enlightened sexism is a response, deliberate or not, to the perceived threat of a new gender regime. It insists that women have made plenty of progress because of feminism — indeed, full equality has allegedly been achieved, so now it’s okay, even amusing, to resurrect sexist stereotypes of girls and women. … Because women are now ‘equal’ and the battle is over and won, we are now free to embrace things we used to see as sexist. … In fact, this is supposed to be a relief. Thank God girls and women can turn their backs on stick-in-the-mud, curdled feminism and now act dumb in string bikinis to attract guys. … (E)nlightened sexism is meant to make patriarchy pleasurable for women.” Well, that would certainly explain why it feels so comfortable yet so unreasonable, all at the same time.

Douglas argues that the construction of enlightened sexism rests in the media rests on a few basic tenets. There’s the outsized representation of cool, tough, smart women and girls who have “made it,” painting the picture of an already-won war in lifelike detail. There’s the nurturance of a generational rift between what Douglas calls Vintage Females such as herself, many of them hard-won experts on the subject of institutional change, and the “I’m-not-a-feminist-but…” camp of her daughter’s generation who are clear on their right to autonomy but squeamish about the label previously used to get it.

Then there’s the pervasive use of irony that’s dominated some of the most popular shows in the last two decades, presenting ever-more outrageous words and actions under the nudge-wink cover of “Oh come on, you know we’re only kidding.” What’s truly exquisite about Douglas, though, is that she seeds every one of these points with their multifaceted reflections on the small screen, and the result is a journey that speeds from “90210” to “Xena” to “Buffy” to Janet Reno to L’il Kim to JonBenét Ramsey to “Survivor” to “Mean Girls.” It’s a rambunctious jaunt down pop culture memory lane with a wisecracking guide pointing out interesting stuff you didn’t know about intimately familiar landmarks.

First, I just want to say “thanks.” I turned 13 in 1990, and this catalog of darn near every piece of news and entertainment that shaped me is breathtaking — are you so good at deconstructing the media by now that you can see its patterns unfold in real time? Or does it have to “settle”? I think that the advantage of doing historical work is that when you go back, you see things a bit more clearly. And so it was actually very interesting to be reminded of how much feminist movement there was in the early 1990s; it was really interesting to go back and be reminded of riot grrrls, “Sassy,” the “year of the woman.” It stands out even more starkly when you look back at it. So while there are some trends that you can see while they’re happening, there’s a clarity that comes when you stand back and you’re not in the middle of it.

What’s an evening in front of the tube with you like? Is there shouting at the screen, maybe a notebook involved? Do you ever just get to watch a show and, you know, enjoy it? (Laughs.) It depends on what’s on. Often, yes. And you know, there’s a lot screaming when the news is on, but it depends on the show — how can you watch “Toddlers and Tiaras” without screaming? It’s truly gruesome. But no, I enjoy watching television. I really sought to position myself in my writing as a fan; I’m a baby boomer, part of the first TV generation, so I have a love/hate relationship with it. And sometimes I love and hate the same thing and the same time — “Gossip Girl” is an example of that.

What are you watching these days? One of the shows I like is “The Good Wife”; it’s gotten better and better. It’s really interesting what the Julianna character has to go through, both professionally and with her family, as a result of a scathing sexual scandal. I think it’s one of the more complex depictions of a woman juggling work and family and reentering the workforce. “Modern Family” is great, and of course “Glee” — both of those are created and written about people who care about promoting diversity, and they’re so well written and done with such flair.

It makes perfect sense to me when you talk about the generational divide at work here, that younger girls and even younger feminists are encouraged to pit themselves against the hairy, humorless Vintage Feminists and that the vehicle for this is either mainstreamed pornography or being “sex-positive,” depending on which side you’re on. But then I think, "Wait — aren’t these Vintage Feminists the same ones who had the same conversation with their own mothers about the time 'free love' came knocking?" Could you talk a little about the differences or similarities between those two generational struggles? It’s a great question because of how our experiences position us in this odd way. My generation was very much a part of the sexual revolution — I was a young feminist at the time and one of the very first things we did was throw the double standard out the window. The sexual revolution was absolutely crucial to the rise of feminism. It showed women that if they could claim the same sexual equality, then why not political and educational equality? So for my generation of women to be cast as anti-sex, Victorian and prudish is preposterous.

Having said that, I think what those of us who have written about this — and there have been others — it’s not that we are in any way anti-sex or opposed to our daughters enjoying sex. It’s the way in which that desire for sexual freedom and agency has been so co-opted by corporate interests and then twisted in ways that actually exploit our daughters’ sexuality in ways that aren’t coming from them — it’s coming from marketers. It’s that exploitation of a genuine desire and twisting it so that our daughters, instead of being empowered agents, are told that the best way to achieve that is to turn themselves into sex objects for men. So it’s that corporate twisting that’s upsetting to women like me. You’re walking this very fine line — you’re not anti-sex, but you are anti-corporate-exploitation-of-your-daughter’s-sexuality, so that can come off as confusing.

I know that this isn’t a childrearing book, but you do talk about your daughter and the relationships each of you have with the TV, and I wondered if you had a good solid piece of advice for all of us who are trying to keep our own daughters’ brains from being poisoned without chucking the whole 21st century and heading for the Montana wilds. Is there a middle ground? Are there rules to help us keep finding it over and over? Yes. You know, one of the things that various studies have shown is that one of the things parents can do is show their children how to talk back to the media. Kids have to learn at a young age that the big box in the living room with all the beautiful images can be dressed down, and should be. I have friends who decided not to have TV in the house, or who restrict it very strictly. But I do this for a living! I’m not going to not have a TV, and besides, I like TV! What I found is that when my daughter was little, maybe between the ages of 3 and 10, I could come in and say why a show or part of a show was silly or why this advertising campaign was stupid. Now when they become teenagers, you have a real problem.

Here was my kid, a good student, playing sports, and just trying to escape for a while into the world of sorority life (on TV). And in comes her mother screaming about how college women are portrayed as being so shallow and stupid…and she wanted to kill me. “Mom. It’s just a TV show.” Well now my daughter’s a young feminist, she’s 21, she’s a student at U-M and she’s actually quite concerned about the images being fed to us. So you have ups and downs.

And parents of boys can and should do this too, because there are so many shows in which boys are dumb. Or they’re incompetent around the house and all they can do is drink beer. Or as hypermasculine, in which the best way to solve problems is through violence. So that’s something we need to talk back to TV about as well. Consumerism, hypersexualization — study after study shows that if parents every once in a while point out what they find objectionable, it has a tremendous effect. Not even because of what’s said particularly, but that the box, the images can be talked back to.

I love your analysis of irony, because it’s one of the things that I didn’t have a name for but have felt since I watched my first episode of "South Park" — it was funny, and I laughed, but I’ve never watched another episode because I didn’t feel good about laughing, that even though I “got” that the words were a joke, I just couldn't shake the feeling that I’d rather not participate in it. And when you point out that this removed stance is a crucial mechanism for enlightened sexism, it suddenly makes perfect sense. But this culture of irony has been way bigger than gender issues for almost two decades now, and I wondered if you see it as a cover for “enlightened” anything else — racism, classism, all of it, some of it? I actually have a graduate student who’s beginning to look at this: the way in which various shows use irony to mask anti-ethnic sentiment, homophobia, racism as well as sexism, and there’s a lot of stuff around class. My students love watching “Jersey Shore” — why? Is it because they want to be like them? No. It’s because they want to feel superior to these Jersey kids, to engage in classism. And also — this kind of ironic stance, I was talking about it in terms of sexism, but it also gives a lot of permission to feel superior to people based on race. Ever watch “Wife Swap”? At the end of it, you the viewer are supposed to feel superior to both the pig farmer in Iowa and to the Manhattan socialite. So this use of irony not only does its work around sexism, but around classism as well.

There is so much in this book that I could chew on it over and over again — to take just two quotes, “The extremeness of sexism means there is no sexism” and “Feminism itself is sexist” are brain-exploding ideas. But I wondered from your perspective, is there one epiphany or change in behavior that you wish every person who read this book would wake up with tomorrow morning? I wish that people could see enlightened sexism for what it is and see the way in which it really reinforces the continuation of negative public policies for women and families. We have the worst public support system for women and families of any industrialized nation. And of course we’re at a time now, because of the recession and because of the economic crises here and in Europe, there are all these deficit hawks, and not only can we not have new programs, but we have to scale back the ones we have. To scale back maternity leave, child care programs — I don’t know that that’s even on the table in Europe, but we don’t have any of that. We’re seen as some special interest group for working mothers (instead of considering how children get cared for as a matter that impacts all of us).

Women, the majority of them, are still locked into dead-end, low-paying jobs where the median income is between $28,000 and $31,000 a year, which is hard to live on. (I would like people to see) the way in which these women are completely erased in our media landscape in favor of women who are richer, more successful and more prominent, so there’s this illusion that all women have it made in the shade.

Most of this book talks about the national media and isn’t specific to place, but I can’t help thinking that you, your name and your work are things that contribute to Ann Arbor’s reputation as a progressive hotbed. Do you like living here? Is there anything about the town or the university that makes you think, “This is a really good place to be a woman and raise a daughter”? Ann Arbor is consistently ranked as one of the top places to live. It’s culturally vibrant, it’s very green in both senses of the word, there’s a lot going on intellectually — I’ve felt lucky to live here and raise my daughter here. One of the best decisions I ever made was to come to the university in 1996. It’s a well-run place with good values, including very strong family values. We all work pretty hard and there’s a strong work ethic — it’s a workaholic place — but there are strong policies to help young families juggle young children with doing the work of the university. I think it has a terrific culture that I admire.

Susan Douglas' "Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism's Work Is Done" is available at Borders and Nicola's Books.

Leah DuMouchel is a free-lance writer who covers books for AnnArbor.com.