ABSTRACT
Society as a whole was aging; the baby boomers, the largest demographic group, were turning fifty and redefining what chronological age meant. The 1980s and 1990s were a time when women's roles were redefined yet again. Many comedies of the 1980s and 1990s showed women as much more independent, most notably in Roseanne, in which the lead character, a working-class woman, was sarcastic, outspoken, and unwilling to be pushed around. Some of these character developments led feminist critics to hope that perhaps TV had begun to show a more positive attitude about women. Spanish-language TV in the 1990s still restricted women to hosting segments about cooking or fashion, playing stereotypic roles in telenovelas or looking sexy while assisting the male host. Sport was certainly one area in which positive changes for women had occurred, and Helen Wills Moody lived to see many of them.
