So I admit it. I am a fanatic of the show Scandal.  Over the course of seven seasons, the show filled a hole in my soul that I did not know I had.

As a woman of color, it has been difficult to see myself in those who are portrayed on television.  I grew up in the era of the Cosby Show; Mrs. Claire Huxtable, as nice as she was, didn’t cut it.  I wanted to see women who looked like me grappling with real life issues.  I didn’t want to see “perfection” – I wanted to see reality.

Then came Scandal.  Scandal provided a double whammy in a good way – it gave me two strong women of color.  One in Shonda Rhimes, who wrote/produced the show; the other was the strong female lead Olivia Pope (played by Kerry Washington). 

For one, Shonda Rhimes is amazing.  She ripped headlines from the news, as well as from our own personal lives. She has a way of taking so many topics from current events – police shootings, mental health, interracial relationships, #MeToo, and being a black woman at work constantly fighting for respect in a white man’s world– and weaving them into an episode in a flawless, non-preachy manner.  No subject was taboo.  Even though the episodes surrounding the kidnapping of Olivia Pope were a bit much, Shonda subsequently showed what PTSD looks like in real life – self medicating through alcohol, paranoia, and nightmares. 

Then comes Olivia Pope herself.  She has that walk, that swagger, that lets you know she’s in the building.  Olivia Pope exuded confidence and control even if that was not true in that moment.  She was a campaign consultant, a lobbyist, an attorney like myself, and a fixer. I barely knew what a fixer was before the show – it’s not something you are taught in school.  While I am not a fixer per se, my career has evolved to the point that those skills – media savvy, getting ahead of issues, advocacy – have all come into play.  It feels more natural now that I have seen what it can look like.  She opened up a whole new career path for me, while showing us all how to advocate and engage for causes that we care about.

Of course, there was a dark side.  She had a dysfunctional family dynamic – but even as her father “Papa Pope” (played by Joe Morton) killed people as a ruthless state-sanctioned assassin, he was suave, highly intelligent, and obsessed with paleontology.  He did not fall into any stereotype commonly seen on television or the media about men of color.  The speech about the “black tax” in Season 1, Episode 3 – a person of color needs to work twice as hard to get half as much – spoke to my own experience of what my father told me.  It hit home so hard that I squirmed in my seat saying “oooh girl”.  Flashbacks ran through my mind of bringing home as a young girl anything less than an A from school on a test. Doing so always resulted in receiving the same exact lecture Papa Pope gave to his daughter. Her mother (played by Khandi Alexander), who was incarcerated for all manner of dastardly deeds, would never let Olivia wallow in self-pity – with painful accountability for Olivia’s actions. Her monologue at the end of Season 6 about the pain of women of color was epic:

Damn shame. I tell you… being a black woman. Be strong, they say. Support your man, raise your man, think like a man. Well damn, I gotta do all that? Who’s out here working for me, carrying my burden, building me up when I get down? Nobody. Black women out here trying to save everybody and what do we get? Swagger jacked by white girls wearing cornrows and bamboo earrings. Ain’t that a bitch? But we still try. Try to help all y’all. Even when we get nothing. Is that admirable or ridiculous? I don’t know.”

Olivia’s love life was a mess.  I in no way support infidelity or being a side piece. However, as dramatized as it was, it is not too different from the average woman’s single life. You wonder if you have to make the choice between love and career.  You wonder if you are good enough, pretty enough, thin enough; yet you cannot allow yourself to wallow in self-doubt because you must portray an image of power and success in order to be effective in the working world.  Sometimes, dinner was red wine and popcorn (I seriously thought I was the only one who did that — thank you Olivia Pope!). Unlike other portrayals on television, she was not a choir girl.  She had real decisions to make, all with consequences.  Sometimes it worked out; other times there was a painful lesson attached. 

Olivia Pope broke boundaries and encouraged me to do the same.  A whole generation of little girls of color know that it is possible to advocate effectively, run a business, and change the world. She embodied what it meant to be a woman of color at work, and in charge – with the same human struggles that plague all of us.  The concept of being a “gladiator” – a fighter, a warrior for justice, is something that I, along with so many others, are taking to heart daily.  She is my generation’s Mary Tyler Moore; Olivia Pope is one of those cultural television icons that we will never forget.