I believe that if you do believe men and women have equal rights if someone asks if you’re a feminist, you have to say yes because that is how words work.
Aziz Ansari, 2015

The four sweetest words in the English language — “You wore me down.”
Tom Haverford, 2012

Aziz Ansari’s definition of “feminist” (mentioned on the Late Show with David Letterman) makes clear how “words work” in many contemporary performances of masculinity—feminism is ”no action and all talk.” His definition of feminism, “believ[ing] men and women have equal rights” is a sound bite—feminism lite—that actually paraphrases Merriam-Webster’s “definition for students” but misses an important element, one the Oxford Dictionary does capture: “the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes” (“Feminism”). Ansari’s definition, focused on words, lacks any reference to advocacy or to enacting authentically feminist practices and behaviors that demonstrate beliefs.

Ansari’s IRL (In Real Life) sound-bite-feminism, while commendable and supportive of the feminist movement, is reflective of the often-overlooked feminist issue regarding practice. For us, there is an important connection to the ubiquity of such sound-bite-feminism and his character in Parks and Recreation, a show widely praised for its feminist storylines and characters (e.g., Bernstein’s “Parks and Recreation: A Feminist Utopia” and Engstrom’s Feminism, Gender, and Politics in NBC’s Parks and Recreation). Ansari’s character, Tom Haverford, embodies a “lovable sexism” where authenticity is used as an excuse for sexist behavior and unsettles the positive feminist messages occurring in the show.

Parks and Recreation is filmed in a mockumentary style similar to The Office.The show centers around a group of governmental employees/friends in the Parks and Recreation Department in fictional Pawnee, Indiana. While the show’s arc encompasses the main cohort of characters, Leslie Knope (played by Amy Poehler) is often the focus of the storylines. Knope, a self-proclaimed feminist, is regularly written into situations where women are battling for equality against white patriarchy, as represented by other government departments and the Pawnee City Council. For instance, in “Women in Garbage,” (a pun for having to deal with patriarchy), Knope challenges the Sanitation Department’s assumptions about “women’s work” and strength (i.e., women are exclusively hired as “secretaries”). Leslie and her coworker challenge assumptions by being garbage collectors for a day to prove their worth, though the Sanitation Department sets them up to fail. There is a refrigerator at the final collection stop, which “even” the men couldn’t move. Leslie and her coworker use their strength and wits to succeed. They find volunteers to help them move the refrigerator to a shelter rather than the dump. In this episode, the patriarchal ideology about women’s lack of physical strength is refuted, and Leslie’s intelligence and ethic of care for others is highlighted. The joke is clearly on patriarchy. Parks and Recreation takes feminism seriously and pokes fun at patriarchal assumptions about women with wit and humor.

Parks and Recreation has been rightly described as heuristic because of how it teaches viewers about feminism, puts feminism in action, and advocates for it (e.g., Ryan’s “What ‘Parks And Recreation’ Taught My Son about Feminism (And So Much Else)” and Froio’s “Five Feminist Teachings in Parks and Recreation”). Such instructions are not exclusive to women and their behaviors. Acting City Manager Chris Traeger, for instance, invites department heads to a meeting in “Women in Garbage” to address issues of gender inequity, helping viewers learn how to put into practice a feminist ethic. Only men show up. Traeger is dismayed and even notes he is himself part of the problem. In “Lucky,” naive Andy Dwyer, wanting to try something new, randomly checks out a Women’s Studies class at the local community college. After sitting in on the class, Andy is so inspired he ends up taking and passing the class, where he is introduced to feminist ideas. Though the context is comedic and Andy himself learns about feminism, the point for viewers is very important: Women’s Studies should be normalized as a worthy pursuit, rather than, as the show points out, considered a “last choice” for a man.

While the show certainly deserves such praise for its feminist rhetoric—in how feminism is enacted through characters, storylines, and positive feminist references (e.g., Laura Mulvey and Naomi Wolf)—Tom Haverford and his relationship with Leslie Knope is an important exception to the show’s feminist norm. While there are certainly other characters with complicated relationships to feminist practices and with the feminist protagonist, Leslie Knope, Tom is unique in what he “gets away with” in terms of amount, explicitness, and awareness of his sexist practices. Tom might be said to be a type of metamodern anti-feminist—a character who oscillates between non-traditional masculinity and stereotypically sexist masculinity. Our webtext focuses on the relationship between these two metamodern characters, illustrating how Tom embodies rhetorical maneuvers that “wore me [us, the authors] down,” enable an unhealthy masculinity, and encourage “lovable sexism”—a sexism cloaked in personal authenticity that invites men to “believe” in feminism without practicing and/or advocating for it, rendering feminism inert—as rhetorical inaction.