Rhoda Morgenstern and Me: Remembering a Role Model

This ranks as one of my alltime favorite momentsamp160We were in a small Manhattan apartment in the fall of 1999 The crew and cast were scrunched in shooting what turned out to be a dreadful movie Mary and Rhoda No matter It was still a reunion of characters fromamp160The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spinoff Rhoda two showsamp160that helped form generations of feminists I know I am oneMary Tyler Moore she of the spunk which Mr Grant hated a fabulous wardrobe and a surprisingly strong backbone hidden beneath a chirpy Midwestern veneer had her best friend Rhoda Morgenstern Rhoda was a fasttalking straightshooting smartaleck from the Bronx with the prototypical Jewish motherI identified with all of that Plus Rhoda39s mom played by the incomparable Nancy Walker was named Ida the same as my grandmother My mother even had a copy of Gainsborough39s quotThe Blue Boyquot hanging in our living room just like the MorgensternsI told this to Valerie forgive the informality here but we are talking about someone who instantly felt like a longlost BFF and that39s when she took my hands in hers and we both laughed From when I first watched Rhoda in elementary school next to the el in the Bronx and into college still in New York City just downtown it hadn39t occurred to me that this is what a role model looks likeWhen I was a kid I didn39t see myself on TV Trust me I didn39t look like the blondes on The Brady Bunch or the adorable frecklefaced gingers on other shows No one came close until Rhoda or perhaps her sister Brenda Julie Kavner But there she was navigating single life in Minneapolis on The Mary Tyler Moore Show from 197074 and then runningamp160the gamut from single to engaged to married to estranged to divorced and ultimately single all over again from 197478 on RhodaRhoda came not just from my borough but from a block away She was 17 years older and her family was more affluent they had made it to the fancy street of the Grand Concourse Rhoda was fashionable funny a terrific older sister and a great friend Plus she took no guff from anyone amp8211 except her mother Everyone took crap from Ida There was a choiceI loved so much about Rhoda especially that she took the subway to her wedding which her mother had hijacked turning it from an intimate affair into a buildingwide hullabalooamp160My mother tried that too She canceled a bridal shower a friend was throwing and rescheduled one at a Bronx diner your choice of chicken salad tuna or shrimp salad Eventually I outfoxed my mom regarding the ceremony but it wasn39t easy The hourlong wedding episode first telecast in 1974 was an outsize popculture event at the time and it remains one of the mostwatched episodes of series television in the history of the mediumI especially loved listening to Rhoda She spoke in my original accent before enough people yelled at me that quotwaterquot has an quotRquot at the end I selfedit constantly but won39t drop some expressions that Rhoda brought to the greater world She called a feeb a feeb I39ve only heard the term from people who grew up in the only NYC borough on the mainland It39s short for feeble but isn39t used disrespectfully for the infirm Feeb is reserved strictly for the terminally incompetent like many of the men Mary and Rhoda datedWatching Rhoda burst on the scene when I was what39s now called a tween but was then still just a girl inspired my fashion sense I tied my mother39s scarves around my head aiming for the Rhoda effect Unfortunately my result was more along the lines of the Little Steven effectRevisiting Mary on Hulu andamp160Rhoda on YouTube and a major thank you to the editor of this site Ed Martin who pushed me to do so the first thing I noticed is how hilarious they are Some comedies elicit a smile or a knowing nod but not these kinds of guffawsThe second was how incredibly sexist that time was Rhoda handled it well on both shows Women had to it wasn39t as if the laws were protecting us During the pandemicamp160I have been taking long walks often with a friend The other day while discussing the sexual harassment allegations against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo we started talking about similar incidents we39ve enduredamp160Over the course of four miles we kept coming up with examples Initially it was a small yet disgustingly rife subset the minefield of being young female reporters at maledominated newspapers in the 1980sThe term sexual harassment had been coined while Rhoda was still on Mary39s show and I was still in high school but frankly I didn39t know it This was sadly simply part of work no matter the job Among the ugly memories is an editor who wanted me to go off for a weekend even though we were both married I said no repeatedly When I threatened to report him to my metro editor he laughed in my face This rat bastard another frequently heard Bronx term signed off on the metro editor39s reviews he warned me Eventually he hit on a woman at a boozy party and her husband punched him in the face I wish I had been the one to clock himI guarantee every woman especially those now considered of a certain age has similar stories of harrassment The times I handled it best When I responded like Rhoda Like when I had that waitress job at a Chinese restaurant in the financial district I was bringing a man his food and he grabbed my ass So I dropped the hot plate in his lap I39m still proud I was fired for that It felt dare I say it very RhodaAs we continue to celebrate Women39s History Month we need to thank those strong women who came before us And my grandmother an immigrant a nurseamp160and someone I am still afraid of although she39s been dead for 36 years is someone I thank as much as Rhoda would thank Ida MorgensternIn all these years of loving Rhoda I have to admit that I started out wanting to be like her Now as a Jewish mother myself I may have morphed into IdaAs Ida would say So tell me is that such a bad thingClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with 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Rhoda Morgenstern and Me: Remembering a Role Model

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Jacqueline Cutler

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