Mrs. America’s Episode Eight finally unleashed its purpose for fictional character Alice. As the right-hand woman of Phyllis, fictional Alice has been emblazoned on the screen throughout the miniseries. Hollywood portrayed her as the silent type, until now.
The National Women’s Conference reaches Houston. The fabricated story line starts with Phyllis giving Alice the duty to deliver a speech against the extension of the Equal Rights Amendment deadline. Alice struggles as reporters twist her words in an impromptu interview, and she finds herself unable to answer the feminist talking points.
Later, Alice is seen strolling through the convention after drinking too much and taking a random pill. She sees all the various booths of the feminists, lesbians, religious groups, and more endorsing the Equal Rights Amendment and women’s liberation. Her impaired state “awakens” her to this love and harmony of the feminist movement. This is Hollywood’s brilliant idea of proving Phyllis’s alleged hypocrisy about controlling women?
Alice is a fabricated character, but the atmosphere of drugs, homosexuality, pro-abortion propaganda, paganism, and abuse of religion is factual. “Do as thou wilt” is the ideology that feminism endorses. Hollywood proposes it as a freeing and inclusive alternative to Phyllis’s “Fix your face” judgmental attitude.
Despite Alice’s rough appearance, the feminists allow her and Pamela to be in the room while they have their meeting about the women’s platform. Does Hollywood think people are ignorant? Everyone knows a smart leader would never let an opposing force into their camp. Once again, fake Alice gives Hollywood license to portray a fake scene.
Creative license allows the fictitious Alice to play a major role in Mrs. America, but reality is undeniable. Phyllis explained that at Houston feminists “wanted total equality in everything which meant their Equal Rights Amendment…abortion on demand financed by the taxpayers… the whole panoply of gay and lesbian rights and…universal childcare, so that women could be relieved of their burden of having to take care of children so the government would do it.”
The feminists’ drug-fueled celebration of ERA’s triumph was an hallucination. In the end, Phyllis won, not because she was condescending as Hollywood imagines, but because she inspired women. Phyllis encouraged women to be a voice and defend their rights to be wives, mothers, and most importantly women.