Some watch The Office reruns to unwind. Others get lulled into the shiplap-covered wonderworld of HGTV. As for me, I spent a lovely weekend bingeing Netflix's Shine On with Reese, an Oprah-esque talk show starring Reese Witherspoon that is perfect soothing female empowerment TV.
Shine On originally aired on DirecTV last year, but became streamable on Netflix earlier this month. Each roughly 20-minute episode features Witherspoon meeting up with a powerful woman in a specific industry and talking to her about her path to success, the hurdles they overcame, and how they got where they are today. Every story reliably follows the same formula, much like the calming haze of Queer Eye, and you know you're going to get a sweet happy ending. The Hollywood episodes have bold-faced names you probably love — Dolly Parton! Ava DuVernay! — but the ones outside The Industry are equally fascinating.
Take an episode about Simone Askew, the first African-American woman at West Point to earn the role of First Captain, leader of the Corps of Cadets and in charge of supervising over 3,000 of her peers. Witherspoon travels to the military school to spend the day with her, and it's a thoughtful peek into a world not often shown on TV. Askew and her friends discuss their challenges and perspectives on gender in an obviously male-dominated world. It's interesting to hear about what issues remain the same everywhere, and which ones are specific to them as young women in the military (dating sounds like a particularly difficult nightmare for West Point students).
The more often we hear stories about women succeeding, owning their ambitions and showing a path forward, the more we'll see of it.
Shine On also highlights Witherspoon as an interviewer; she's not just a great one on Apple TV+'s The Morning Show! No real surprise for the A-list actress and producer, but she's emotionally engaged and hyper-articulate, with thoughtful questions. She tears up a few times talking about how the women have inspired her, which means I teared up a few times listening to how the women inspired her.
For my money, an episode featuring P!nk prepping for a world tour was one of the most affecting. The duo discussed the pain that comes from being working-outside-the-home moms, and also got into a little mutual admiration society about P!nk's song "Stupid Girls" and how they both felt they were out on an island alone calling out Hollywood beauty standards and opportunities for women over a decade ago. All that, plus Reese tried being an aerial acrobat like P!nk!
It was encouraging throughout to see how forthrightly Witherspoon and others spoke about diversity, highlighting that we can't fall into a trap where only straight cis white women are getting ahead (they don't name it specifically, but the perils of the White Feminism #GirlBoss mindset are definitely stated). Instead, Witherspoon regularly worked into the convo how success in representation must come from all kinds of diversity — racial, sexual, and gender identity; one participant even mentions age.
Shine On isn't particularly groundbreaking, of course, but maybe that's the point. The more often we hear stories about women succeeding, owning their ambitions and showing a path forward, the more we'll see of it and we won't need to call it out. It's normalizing. Against all the harshness of the world, it was, well, nice to watch several hours of women talking about the empires they've built, the problems they overcame, and how, ultimately, they kicked ass and won.
Not too shabby for a few hours of television.
Shine On with Reese is currently streaming on Netflix.
