In a previous post, I discussed how the 1971 arrival of Nicole as a semi-regular cast member signaled an important shift in Garry Trudeau’s approach to writing about women. Before Nicole joined the cast, women in Doonesbury were either sexpots who existed solely to fulfill adolescent sexual fantasies or pathetic figures to be ridiculed because they were too unattractive to be desired. Nicole’s presence as an independent, thinking woman who was sharply critical of the cluelessness expressed by Mike and the other male denizens of Walden campus paved the way for Doonesbury to become an explicitly feminist strip.
That said, one of GBT’s most prominent female characters (possibly the woman he has drawn the most, but I haven’t counted) troubles the strip’s long-standing reputation as a feminist bastion on the funny pages. I’m talking of course, about Boopsie. Yet while Boopsie was portrayed for decades as an empty-headed sexpot, she too eventually became the kind of strong, self-reliant, independent woman that typifies Doonesbury’s female cast.
Sometime in the 1990s I stopped keeping up with Doonesbury compilations; I still read the strip every day without fail, but I no longer went through the archives on a regular basis. As a result, I’ve discovered a number of mis-rememberings on my part as I reread strips for the first time in decades. One such “false memory” was my belief that Boopsie’s transformation from being the butt of “dumb blonde” jokes to a strong, independent female character happened rather abruptly after B.D. lost his leg in Iraq in April 2004. I was wrong. Several months prior to that moment, Boopsie revealed that she had already become much more than the naive eye-candy that Trudeau had portrayed her as throughout much of the strip’s history. The event that fully marked this transition was Trudeau’s unflinching look at rape culture in college athletics.
Barbara Ann Boopstien (Originally Boopsy for a few strips until the more familiar spelling settled in) joined the cast on 15 September 1971 as B.D.’s girlfriend. Boopsie was a perfect match for B.D. He was the vain dumb jock, the star of the football team, and the kind of guy who only saw women as potential conquests. Boopsie was a cheerleader, an empty-headed sexpot, a stereotypical “dumb blonde” who was, like many of the woman in Doonesbury’s pre-Nicole/pre-Joanie days, little more than an eager object of male desire. 
After Trudeau’s 1980s sabbatical, B.D. took an even larger role in Boopsie’s life: he became her professional manager as well as her life partner. In his absence, however, she took her first steps away from her “dumb blonde” persona. When B.D. was reactivated to fight in the 1990-91 Gulf War, Boopsie, in the absence of her husband and manager, began to exercise agency in a way she never had before, over her career and over the sexiness that had long been her defining characteristic. Boopsie’s discovery that B.D. had cheated on her while on R&R cemented her commitment to no longer allow men to treat her as a doormat; she laid down the law with her husband and made it clear that she would no longer allow herself to be disrespected.
On 11 November 2002 – Veterans’ Day – B.D. learned that he was again being reactivated, this time for the impending invasion of Iraq. In order to ensure that B.D. not lose his job as head coach of Walden College’s football team in his absence, Boopsie proposed that she take the job on an interim basis. Boopsie’s clever reasoning relied on her reputation as an unintelligent woman: because she was a “just some silly dame,” she figured, the team was bound to keep losing; while an interim coach who led the team to victory would likely be offered the job on a permanent basis, Boopsie’s presumed failure would keep B.D.’s position intact.
Before taking up the coaching mantle, Boopsie already had a history with the team; many of the players had followed her acting career and actively lusted after her. Boopsie’s first practice as coach the team went just like we might expect – she showed up wearing a sports bra, much to the players’ approval. However, GBT opted not to take the obvious route and run arcs that focused on the team being distracted by Boopsie’s sexiness; rather, we only catch up with the team at the end of their championship season, one complete with a bowl invite.
After the following season, with B.D. fighting in Iraq, the Coach Boopsie storyline took a dark turn as Trudeau addressed an issue that had been hiding in plain sight for years as we had followed B.D.’s attempts to recruit players for Walden: sexual assault in college athletics. On 1 March 2004, an anonymous woman – we see her only in silhouette – placed a letter in Boopsie’s mailbox; the letter, which we never get to read, accused members of the football team of sexual assault. We later learn that the woman who wrote the letter was “not the first woman to come forward,” and that the assaults took place at “recruiting parties.” B.D.’s professed ignorance of what took place at the parties angers Boopsie, but B.D.’s refusal to believe her, and by extension the women who were raped, is not the only resistance that Boopsie faces as she fights for the team’s victims. Against B.D.’s wishes, Boopsie suspends Walden’s football program, a move that causes a campus riot and leads to President King firing her.
Looking back, one wonders if, in the years leading up to the crisis, GBT hadn’t been creating background for the story behind Boopsie’s brave decision. B.D. certainly helped create the conditions that led to Walden football’s rape crisis. He told one recruit that should he be “accuse[d] of date rape,” Walden would “set [him] up with a top legal team” and a “publicist to get out [his] side of the story.” B.D. also fostered a culture of inappropriate sexual behaviour in the locker room: when he announced to his players that Boopsie would be taking over, the squad’s first concern is whether or not team’s regular pornography viewing session would continue under her leadership.
Trudeau wrote the arc in response to an unfolding sexual assault crisis at the University of Colorado, where, among other abuses, “sex parties” were part of the football team’s recruiting strategy. While UC ended up paying a large settlement to some of the university’s victims, the case did little to reduce sexual assault in the world of college sports. In recent years, we’ve learned that college athletic programs are still experiencing, facilitating, perpetuating, and covering up sexual assault in epidemic proportions. The examples are far too numerous to mention. As I write this, Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) stands accused of turning a blind eye to a years-long pattern of sexual abuse of Ohio State wrestlers . Two Midwestern universities that I have a personal connection with had appalling controversies when I was on campus. While I was doing my Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, the college was under investigation for its handling of the sexual misconduct of a football player. While I attended Michigan, my partner attended Michigan State. We lived in East Lansing and Lansing for four years; I wrote the bulk of my dissertation at a carrel in the MSU library, and I made many close friends in the MSU community. I don’t need to remind you of the horror show that was unfolding on campus the whole time.
On the funny pages, as in real life, little good came out of Walden’s crisis. A press conference held by members of the football team revealed how sexual assault had been normalized on campus, complete with standard blanket denials, the singling out of “a few bad apples,” and a persistent inability on the part of men to understand the meaning of a simple two-letter word: no. Meanwhile, President King empaneled a task force whose findings were predetermined, and the campus community branded Boopsie a “head case” for thinking that a zero-tolerance policy on sexual misconduct was a reasonable solution. B.D. was never held accountable for his role in the crisis: the man who had, at best, turned a blind eye to endemic rape in his program and refused to stand by his wife when the shit hit the fan remained in charge of the program.
Trudeau’s decision to not address this part of B.D.’s past when he returned to Walden’s sidelines could well be excused as another continuity slip in the strip’s long history – there have been a few, and I’ll write about them at some juncture. In the years following Walden football’s rape crisis, GBT has continued to address the topic of rape culture, with examples ranging from the characterization of noted sex criminal Arnold Schwarzenegger as “Herr Gropenfuhrer,” a giant hand that wallows in inappropriate comments about women to, of course, his chronicling of Melissa Wheeler’s recovery from being raped by her commanding officer in Afghanistan. Recently, Boopsie expressed her concerns about her daughter Sam’s potential interactions with young men who lack “impulse control.”
When B.D. lost his leg in Iraq and then developed a severe case of PTSD, Boopsie was saddled with responsibilities that no person can ever prepare for, and, as we will see in future installments, she revealed levels of strength and wisdom that would have been inconceivable for earlier iterations of her character. No longer B.D.’s arm candy, she truly became his right hand, an equal partner in a family’s struggle to endure tragedy. That said, before those tragedies struck, her response to the tragedies experienced by the unnamed victims of Walden’s football team showed us that she was already another one of the strong, independent, and insightful women of Doonesbury.
Reading Doonesbury 