Badass Female Confessions of a Flawed 'Sons of Anarchy'

Badass Female Confessions of a Flawed 'Sons of Anarchy' 

When I was first asked to audition for a new female character on the final season of Sons of Anarchy, I wasn't exactly caught up on all six previous seasons.

Annabeth Gish as Dep. Sheriff Althea Jarry in 'Sons of Anarchy'

I remember back in 2008 watching the early episodes, surprised by the drama about a motorcycle- club culture with which I was not personally familiar. Always a fan of Katey Sagal (whom I'd worked with in 1999 in the very different context of a Lifetime TV movie), I was intrigued to watch the fierce and seldom friendly colors of her character, Gemma Teller. The combustible writing of creator Kurt Sutter and the world of mayhem he began to build was compelling to me in the strangest of ways. I became oddly invested in the world of SAMCRO and Charming and the motley crew of unusually dangerous, formidable characters. It was not a show typical to my sensibilities, and as I watched, I couldn't disregard my own conflicts as a woman — alert to and aware of sticky words like "objectification" and "sexualization" and the all-pervasive "male gaze." As a viewer, those were precarious and potentially compromising concepts.

Such extreme violence, such avid and obvious masculine themes like motorcycles, guns, prostitutes, and vengeance played out in dark and disturbing ways: a vicious and controlling matriarch whose ever-so-slightly sexualized love and obsession for her son was a central axis of the show; deceit everywhere infected the actions of each tortured character in his or her own way; women as "old ladies" and "crow-eaters" scantily clad and willing to offer sex as recreation and entertainment.

Annabeth Gish as Dep. Sheriff Althea Jarry,
Charlie Hunnam as Jax, and Tommy Flanagan as Chibs in
 'Sons of Anarchy' 

And yet passionate, fervent love existed between central relationships, as did abiding loyalty to family, club, and home. The women of SAMCRO, who were as flawed and conflicted as the men, powerfully staked claim, driving the narrative and affecting almost every action of the characters around them. I loved the unpredictability of female characters like Tara Knowles, an educated doctor surgically saving lives and then throwing fierce right hooks to protect her man and club, or June Stahl, a beautiful bisexual ATF agent whose villainy was unapologetically kinetic and full of her own agenda of vengeance. Even the porn stars took ownership of their property, taking charge of their objectification by producing, directing, and editing videos of their "creative" exploits read more

Badass Female Confessions of a Flawed 'Sons of Anarchy'