When you see them you’ll be all “OMG, she amazing!”
#1 – Alicia Florrick – The Good Wife
Created by Robert and Michelle King
Cast: Julianna Margulies, Archie Panjabi, Christine Baransky, Alan Cumming, Chris Noth, Matt Czuchry
Plot: After her Cook County’s State’s Attorney of a husband goes to prison, Alicia Florrick has to go back to being a lawyer, which she hasn’t done since she became a mother. In spite of her husband’s media coverage, she acts like the “good wife”, for his and her kids’ sake. As she goes back to work and has to start from scratch, Alicia faces obstacles, either political, professional or personal but has to stay cold-headed. Alicia Florrick is a strong female lead — she is a mother of two, and has to face life and deal with it on her own. That is why we love her so much!
#2 – Hannah, Jessa, Marnie & Shoshanna – Girls
Created by Lena Dunham and Judd Apatow
Cast: Lena Dunham, Jemima Kirke, Allison Williams, Zosia Mamet, Adam Driver, Alex Karpovsky
Plot: As Hannah arrives to New York to become a writer, her and her friends struggle through life as new young professionals in the Big Apple. Love, sex and family get in the way of their own fantasies, bringing them back on a heartbreaking Earth where they have to deal with their lives the best they can, even if it means that’s gonna hurt.
Those four women each have their own personality and deal with life in a different way, which allows the audience to relate to either of them.
#3 – June – The Handmaid’s Tale
Created by Bruce Miller
Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Joseph Fiennes, Yvonne Strahovski, Alexis Bledel, Madeline Brewer, Ann Dowd, O. T. Fagbenle, Max Minghella, Samira Wiley, Amanda Brugel
Plot: This dystopian series unravels a new world where fertile women who have faulted in their lives become handmaids for couples who cannot have babies naturally. Throughout a monthly ceremony in which the patriarch rapes the maid, they try to conceive a child those women will have to give up and leave to their masters before they transfer to another house. However, June Osborne won’t let the Gilead dictatorship get to her, and she’ll fight until she gets her own family back.
Those women are pawns and cannot express themselves. They don’t have any right anymore and that is something that brings the audience close to them as we wouldn’t be able to imagine a world like this one.
#4 – Rebecca Bunch – Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
Created by Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna.
Cast: Rachel Bloom, Vella Lovell, Gabrielle Ruiz, Scott Michael Foster, Vincent Rodriguez III, Pete Gardner, Donna Lynne Champlin, Santino Fontana, Skylar Astin,
Plot: When Rebecca bumps into her summer camp love in New York, she decides to leave her amazing job and move to West Covina, California to try and win him back. While scheming her way back into his life, the show covers mental health issues such as depression and Anxiety but also societal topics and draws light on the LGBT+ population, family and love.
Rebecca is a woman but she is also a human being and every woman who watches the show can relate to her. None of us is perfect and we’ve all struggled with love once in our life, without always having the answers to our actions. Rebecca is proud to have gone all this way and she is now able to live with her mental health issues without being afraid of who she is.
#5 – Sophia – Girlboss
Created by Kay Cannon
Cast: Britt Robertson, Ellie Reed, Johnny Simmons, Alphonso McAuley, RuPaul
Plot: Do you know what it is to really know what to do with your life and do everything you can to achieve it? Well, Sophia knows. After she finds an amazing jacket in a vintage shop, she discovers she can sell it on eBay for way more money than she bought it. And that is what she will do: earn money from her own apartment. All she needs is a laptop and clothes.
This one-season series is about a very confident and self-made woman who knows what she wants from life, and will do everything she can to get there, no matter what it takes and who gets in her way.
Girlboss is available on Netflix now.
#6 – Ilana & Abbi – Broad City
Created by Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson
Cast: Ilana Glazer, Abbi Jacobson
Plot: This series, formerly a self produced web series, is based on both actresses real life and their attempt to make it in the Big Apple and shows all the prejudice they have to face.
They are not too skinny, they are far from perfect, they are just normal and we love it. Actually, they are perfect through their imperfections and they don’t care about what people think. And that’s how all women should feel.
#7 – Jane Villanueva – Jane The Virgin
Created on screen by Jennie Snyder Urman
Cast: Gina Rodriguez, Yael Grobglas, Justin Baldoni, Andrea Navedo, Brett Dier, Ivonne Coll, Jaime Camil
Plot: When Jane Villanueva discovers she’s been impregnated with somebody else’s baby and went through an unwanted and unplanned IVF instead of getting a regular checkup, her whole world falls apart. And, she’s a virgin! However, she takes this test as a challenge and overcomes it the best she can with the help of her mother and grandmother.
And this female family portrait is the guiding line of the show. They are lost without one another and men rely on them and their natural strength.
I mean, who would handle such a life-changing event that well? Well done, Jane.
#8 – Olivia Pope – Scandal
Created by Shonda Rhimes
Cast: Kerry Washington, Henry Ian Cusick, Columbus Short, Darby Stanchfield, Katie Lowes, Guillermo Diaz, Jeff Perry
Plot: Shonda Rhimes is the mastermind behind this show, as well as Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice, which all star female characters. Olivia Pope is the main character of Scandal and is relatable as she is a powerful woman who follows her guts. The female Churchill if I might say.
Olivia Pope owns a crisis management firm and has to handle complicated situations. That’s what makes her so incredible. But she is not the only relatable female character, as the fourth season focuses on Abby Whelan, another female character portrayed by Darby Stanchfield.
#9 – Annalise Keating – How To Get Away With Murder
Created by Peter Nowalk
Cast: Viola Davis, Billy Brown, Alfred Enoch, Jack Falahee, Katie Findlay, Matt McGorry, Aja Naomi King
Plot: Not only Annalise Keating is a terrific law professor, but when five of her students get involved in a murder, she takes them under her wing, like a mum would. And that’s what she is. Annalise is a mother figure to her students and the audience respects that relationship. She is tough and loving at the same time.
She puts herself in danger to protect them but also teach them what life is and how dangerous it is.
#10 – Carrie Bradshaw – Sex & The City
Created by Darren Star
Cast: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon
Plot: Last but not least! In Sex & The City, the audience follows Carrie Bradshaw and her three friends throughout their love stories and their middle-age life crisis. Those make them human and the audience can easily relate to them. The show dares showing sex scenes but also what is being a mother, as well as struggling having children or just not knowing that the love of your life is the one you least expected.
Carrie Bradshaw is everything we’ve always wanted to do without ever dare doing it. This is why we relate to her: she embraces our own dreams. And has amazing clothes and shoes.
So now, you know what you need to do. Grow some balls and become the woman you’ve always wanted to be.
