When I was growing up in the ’90s, it’s not like there was a shortage offemale role models. From Samantha Jones’ thoroughly selfish orgasms to Topanga schooling Cory on destructive gender-based thinking to Buffy Summers literally coming back from the dead to save the Scooby Gang, these women really knew how to lean in.
But now that I’m older (and wiser? Sure, let’s go with that), I’ve realized that finding strong female characters who happened to bemoms, well, that wasn’t so easy. There was the saccharine, sweet variety (Goody-Two-shoes Annie Camden from7th Heaven), the totally clueless (I’m sorry, Barbara Mack, but how did you not know that your daughter could shoot electricity from her fingers?) or the nagging wife cliché (no lack of examples there).
But with bothHalloweenand an election on the horizon (psst:Here's how to check if you're registered to vote), I’m making a case for why the matriarch of the spookiest family around is the role model we all needed—then, now and into the future. I’m talking, of course, about the creepy, kooky, mysterious and, yes, totally kickass Morticia Addams, played by the fabulous Anjelica Huston inThe Addams Familyand its sequel,Addams Family Values.