If you love to binge cheesy dramas like I do, then you are probably familiar with the popular early 2000s show Desperate Housewives. You are probably even more familiar with the iconic character, Lynette Scavo. Lynette is one of those characters that you hate at the beginning then you grow to love by the end of the series. She is simply put; a control freak who doesn’t take shit from anyone. At the beginning of the series, it almost seems like she needs to be put on a high dose of valium but you learn very quickly that this is just her personality. We meet Lynette when she is already a mother to her twins and happily married. Throughout the show, however, we learn more about her past, specifically before meeting her husband and getting roped into suburban housewife duties.
In one the the throwback episodes, we learn that before meeting her husband, Tom Scavo, Lynette was a corporate powerhouse or as other Gen Z’s like myself would call her a corporate baddie. Lynette was this independent single woman who was on track to become a VP at her marketing firm. She’s seen in these amazing sports coats with the iconic claw clip in her hair. She emphasizes over and over during this time how she doesn’t want to get married, let alone have children. She was on a mission to succeed and take control of her company. I think in a lot of different ways, she was super ahead of her time. She was against the whole housewife trope and would not have been caught dead living in a two-story Victorian house in the suburbs of Connecticut. She would have much preferred to live in an apartment a couple blocks down from her marketing firm in New York where she could hit the clubs on the weekends.
To be honest, I always looked up to her character’s pre-housewife phase. She gave me a small glimpse of what it looks like to be an empowered, single woman in your 20s working to support yourself. She was unique in this aspect because all of the other housewives on the show came from backgrounds where they wanted to settle down, marry, and have children. Lynette always stood out to me because of this and it showed even during her housewife phase. She eventually convinces her husband to let her go back to work and this causes him to be a stay-at-home dad. She challenged these gender roles through the whole show from a feminist lens. I think she would have loved to sit in on one of our classes and discuss feminist issues and would not let anyone think that she was wrong. She would have stood up for what she believed in and never backed down from men telling her to take a seat in the modern day just like she does on the show.
Oh and on top of all of the obstacles she overcomes with her corporate days, running her own business, and having five children, she also battles cancer for a good portion of the show, ultimately beating it. There is absolutely nothing that this woman couldn’t overcome and her resilience has always been something that I admire. Lynette was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma where she gets chemo treatment for it and eventually loses her hair. At the beginning of her cancer journey, Lynette doesn’t tell any of her friends and believes she can fight it all on her own. She eventually realizes that no matter how strong you are, you always need a support system by your side.