Women’s Lived Experience and the Male Gaze in Big Little Lies

Actress and entrepreneur Reese Witherspoon began to bring the world of sunny California to life in the HBO show of Big Little Lies (2017) when she optioned Liane Moriarty's best-selling novel in 2015. Due to its success, it even earned a second season in 2019. Females and female friendships are the show's core, which have proved popular subjects for prestige TV. More notably, complex female characters with layered narratives offer much needed nuance to the characterization of women on television. The show has served as a catalyst for other shows--HBO's Sharp Objects (2018), Apple TV's The Morning Show (2019), and Hulu's Little Fires Everywhere (2020)--driven by female leads. While not all of the series take place in the present day, they were developed during current cultural movements #MeToo and #TimesUp. According to Elizabeth Alsop, female-centered series, like Big Little Lies, "often prioritize the 'formation of feminist community' over one-to-one intimacy."