In thinking about the upcoming Star Trek relaunch movie, I began to ponder how far we have or have not come since the original series, and I wondered: Are they gonna make Uhura wear that miniskirt? And if she does, will we as a culture see it as a good thing or a bad thing?
I’ve decided to write an article on the subject, and I couldn’t think of a better place to begin sifting for opinions and insights than the good and thoughtful folks here at the GWC boards. So weigh in, and help me get started. Would Uhura in the miniskirt be empowering or sexist?
The miniskirt would be sexist, and ridiculous given today’s views on feminism and equality. I think we would all be better served to see the bridge communications officer in something dignified and appropriate. A pair of metallic gold short-shorts and clear plexiglass spike heels works, inmho.
Kidding, kidding. I think she should be wearing whatever everyone else is. If Galactica has taught us anything it’s that the actors can be 'hot" in t-shirts and bdu pants…we the audience have a thousand places to go if we want to see flesh…
If Uhura’s going to be shoved in a mini this time around, I hope her bridge console monitors prominently display the Federation sexual harassment policy.
Before we go any further, maybe I should clarify what I meant by asking if the miniskirt could be “empowering.”
In the Star Trek movies, female officers finally got to wear pants, but Uhura stuck with the skirt, even up to #VI, the last original cast movie. If one wanted to take it a certain way, you could say she was rebelling against dowdy unisex uniforms and stating that she was indeed a woman while still being a professional. So there seems to be a bit of irony lurking here, depending on how you look at it, that what was once looked back on as immodest and denigrating could now be seen as a bold personal choice.
I’m not trying to state an opinion here. I really want to know what everyone’s ideas are on this, especially geeks of a female persuasion.
The Starship Exeter fanfilms are set in TOS era, and the handle this in an interesting way. The normal shipboard uniforms for women are miniskirted, but they change into pants when the go on landing parties.
You know, I almost voted for the “You go, girl” choice, because Nichelle Nichols is 75 years old, and Dang, if she still can pull it off, that’s pretty cool in my book. So if she wore a miniskirt to an awards ceremony or something, I’d view that as the actor’s own choice and be cool with it.
However, if the character Uhura were to show up in the miniskirt…
First we’ve got to acknowledge the history of what that skirt meant and has meant for a long time. To many people, not just women, the Star Trek skirts were a symbol of the Way Things Used to Be. The men wore fairly conservative uniforms, while the women revealed bare necklines and curvy legs. By definition the genders were treated unequally since one gender was “on display” while the other just got to look from behind comfy not-too-revealing jammies. It doesn’t mean that the men weren’t perceived or portrayed as sexy, but mainly they were the “actors” and “viewers” while women were the ones to be acted on or viewed by the men.
When Starbuck shows up at the bar on Cloud Nine in the teal evening dress, it’s cool because it’s flattering and it was her choice. But why doesn’t she wear a slinky, low-cut uniform top with a miniskirt for a uniform? Because it’s impractical and inappropriately brings sexuality into the workplace. If she wants to throw down naked with a different person every week, she can - after work - but in a gender-equal work environment, her uniform shouldn’t reflect any of that. Same goes with Uhura. I know what you’re saying about a woman’s attractive clothing as possibly “empowering,” but I think that depends entirely on the situation - whether it’s her choice or not, and whether it’s appropriate for the time and place.
I can’t help but wonder, did Nichelle Nichols insist on wearing the miniskirt even after the other women started wearing pants? Or did the show’s creators want her to be the exception since everyone was “used” to her great legs?
As far as seeing the views change over time - “what was once immodest and degrading” now seen as personal choice - I don’t think that real feminism (true feminism = believing in the equal treatment and opportunity for people regardless of their gender) has morphed from seeing miniskirts as bad to seeing them as good. It’s just my opinion, but I think this type (my type) of feminist thought applies over different time periods.
There are folks who argue that things like stripping and posing for “Girls Gone Wild” videos are “the new feminism,” (as if doing the same old thing is somehow a fresh take on the matter) and some people argue that if the woman is doing what pleases her, then that is fine. I guess it’s hard to argue with that - unless a woman is unwittingly injuring herself in order to win the gazes, compliments, attentions of others. Everybody wants to feel seen and attractive, but some people may go too far and give up a part of themselves to please others, and it can be disguised as “doing what she wants.”
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Edit: Oh, btw, your title for the post, “What Will Uhura Don?” would make a cool bracelet: WWUD?
Here’s an excerpt of a fascinating article about Uhura from nndb.com. I love the conversation with Martin Luther King.
As Lt. Uhura, communications officer for the Enterprise, Nichols is often credited as the first African-American actress in an American TV series whose character wasn’t stereotypically black – a housekeeper or nanny. Actually, the first was Cicely Tyson’s character (the secretary, Jane Foster) in the 1963-64 series East Side/West Side, but Nichols’ show had a bigger audience and, obviously, a much bigger impact. The network, however, was very jittery about having a black woman in a relatively important role. They reportedly kept fan mail from reaching her, and nagged Roddenberry to keep her role in the background. Nichols was reportedly the only performer in the cast who wasn’t originally offered a contract, but instead worked on a week-to-week basis.
She considered quitting Star Trek midway through its first season, when her character had been given little to do beyond perpetually opening hailing frequencies. In one interview, she famously described Uhura as “a glorified telephone operator in space”. Then, at a civil rights protest, she met Martin Luther King Jr. – who told her that he was a big fan of Star Trek. According to Nichols, when she told King she was thinking of quitting the show, he was shocked. “Don’t you know you have the first non-stereotypical role in television?” she recalls King saying. “For the first time the world will see us as we should be seen – people of quality in the future. You created a role with dignity and beauty and grace and intelligence. You’re not just a role model for our children, but for people who don’t look like us to see us for the first time as equals.”
Nichols is also credited with TV’s first interracial kiss, a smooch with William Shatner’s Captain Kirk, in the 1968 episode “Plato’s Stepchildren”. Many stations in America’s south refused to broadcast the episode, and it was banned in England for almost 25 years. But it wasn’t even a romantic moment – space aliens were using mind control to force the characters to kiss, against their will. The network was so nervous that two versions of the scene were filmed: one with the kiss, and one without it, where Kirk instead dramatically fought off the impulse. “When the camera zoomed in”, says Nichols, “Bill crossed his eyes and the director didn’t notice it until the next day in dailies. Of course the last scene was unusable and they had to go with the kiss scene, which became history as the first interracial kiss on TV.”
Not to argue with you on making the actress, Zoë S. wear a mini skirt would be sexist, but if they are making a sequel of the original, many of us would prefer it to be done “correctly”. You can’t really have a prequel where we change part of the story in order to appease people. Yes, Nichols and nearly all the women of the Original Star Trek wore really short skirts and bared a lot of flesh and weren’t really powerful figures in the show, but I think as Trek evolved into the different incarnations it portrayed women as they were in the actual US military. Women in the WWII were allowed to participate in the war effort abroad but were limited to certain jobs and were required to go back to normal civilian lives afterwards. After several decades, the role of women in the military became more serious and were allowed to become officers. So the way I’ve seen Star Trek is as a reflection of society and a timeline of. This is where we were and this where we are today. Uhura had a limited role and towards the end of the franchise/shows/storyline we had Capt. Katherine Janeway. I don’t think we should just say, “No, she shouldn’t wear the skirt at all, put in pants”. This is literally history. It may not be that serious to some people, as it’s just a show for us nerds and geeks, but it’s still history.
Hmm. Did the women wear miniskirts on Christopher Pike’s Enterprise? (The Cage/Menagerie) I know Number One didn’t, but I can’t remember if the others did. It may actually be more correct for them to be in pants at that point in time.
If it’s really a re-boot, isn’t the Pike backstory quite irrelevant? Obviously, if they show the Enterprise under construction in the teaser, they could choose to make Kirk the first captain of the ship? And let’s not forget Robert (?) April, who was Captain before Pike and Kirk.
This is precisely the point of view I was devil’s advocating. Thanks, Audra. You put it nicely. I do wonder if it was Nichelle Nichols’ choice to continue wearing the skirts in the movies, but somehow I got the impression it was. I’ll have to research that one. There is a difference between wearing something utilitarian and gender neutral for work, and getting dressed up off duty, and Galactica certainly portrays that more realistically than ST:TOS ('course, no one in Star Trek seemed to change out of their uniforms off duty anyway, but that’s another matter.)
As far as men just being allowed to be themselves while the women were there to be looked at, do you think that one’s changed too? I refer, for example, to the Towel Scene.
Edit: Oh, btw, your title for the post, “What Will Uhura Don?” would make a cool bracelet: WWUD?
WWUD bracelets for everyone who posts to this thread!
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On another note, I had gotten the impression for whatever reason that the new movie will in fact be a reboot, not a prequel. So I suppose they could dress the characters in whatever they want, and call it a reinterpretation.
As far as the original pilot, I can’t recall either if all the women wore pants or just Number One. But I do recall that in the Kirk-pilot “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, the women wore pants, but after that, the skirts returned.
I guess if it was a reimagining with a different actor playing a very young Uhura, it might make sense to use the skirt since that was kind of her iconic look.
It is kind of funny, though, to try to separate yourself from the tradition and everything we’re used to, and say, does it make any sense for men and women to dress in such different ways? That is, in terms of a uniform that supposes some degree of professional equality? One way to tell is to reverse it in your mind. All the men will have great bodies and wear denim short-shorts and tight-fitting tank-tops, showing at least 40% of their skin, and all the women can wear long, loose, monk-like robes or something. Lol - it’s pretty much the same thing.
Maybe a compromise would be to have the actress, (assuming Uhura’s character remains female) have a scene where she’s off duty in a fantastically short mini. A rec room 3-d chess tourney, or she could sing a bit a la the original Uhura (TOU), just a nice, quick homage to the original series that the officionados could point to and be happy about…I still think it would be weird to have everyone else on the bridge with their pants tucked into their boots while Uhura sits there constantly trying to pull her skirt down…plus, those pleather bridge seats cannot be comfortable to bare skin, the poor kid’s thighs are going to stick to everything ! So, a quick mini scene would be OK with me.
Maybe a compromise would be to have the actress, (assuming Uhura’s character remains female) have a scene where she’s off duty in a fantastically short mini. A rec room 3-d chess tourney, or she could sing a bit a la the original Uhura (TOU), just a nice, quick