SIU PRSSA Southern Illinois University Public Relations Student Society of America
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In entertainment media there are many shows that portray businessmen, doctors, and lawyers, but what about Public Relations? Representation is a great powerful tool when creating characters. That is part of what brings in your audience. Seeing more diverse jobs and with women in those positions boosts the representations we need in this society.
In a popular show on Netflix, “Workin’ Moms,” created by Catherine Reitman, is about the struggles of being human. This show came out in 2017, since then it has been renewed for the fifth season and is picking up momentum as it becomes a popular show to talk about on social media. I myself discovered this show through one of my social media platforms. In “Workin’ Moms” you can expect it to show moms balancing their homelife and work life and still finding time for themselves. Main character Katie Foster (played by Catherine Reitman) is a new mom, and a very work focused mom, as she does PR.
Throughout the show, we are brought into story lines with her close friends and their life, as well as Katie’s professional struggles. There are episodes where she has to choose work over family and vise versa. It followed the stigma that if you’re a parent in the PR industry you’ll never have time for your family, you will always have to pick work over them, and the amount of the workload was totally normal, to be up until 10pm stressed over work. When Kate decided that isn’t how it should be. She is a person who loves her job but loves her family as well. Reitman broke the wall down by showing her character Katie open up her own PR firm where she would be able to balance her career and her homelife as well as her employees.
This type of representation is so important because to you it might not make a difference, but to that parent struggling to decide to jump into the work life or for a parent struggling to manage their jobs, it could give them a sense of hope that there is a way to be able to be successful and have a family. It gives me hope in a way where I am just starting in the PR field and I feel confident that at some point if I were to have a family, I’d be capable.
Hopefully the more mainstream this type of office culture gets in the entertainment world; it will be adapted in real life. Everyone deserves a healthy work environment where it doesn’t have to be family or work but both and we can become more understanding that life happens.
