Television Reviews : ‘Once Upon Her Time’ Trashes the ‘80s Woman

After you see the Lifetime cable channel documentary, “Once Upon Her Time,” you may never again want to hear the term “a woman of the ‘80s”--or be one.

That is surely not what was intended. Airing tonight at 10 on Lifetime, the film is a collage of real-life scenes, contrasting life styles, comedy sketches and guest-host commentary from Lindsay Wagner, aimed at defining the woman of today.

It’s an intriguing idea--take a camera into different communities, interview a diversity of women and let their words create a composite picture of what it means to be female in the United States.

The intention was good, but a shaky creative vision inadvertently makes this project, directed by Shari Cookson and written by Melissa Jo Peltier, a misogynist’s delight.

We see lengthy snicker scenes of young women whose soaring ambition is mud-wrestling. Stripping and rolling in the mud with male customers, they assure us, is just good, clean fun.

Pouty “models” tell us beauty is more important than personality while they promote the rewards of cosmetic surgery. A sufferer of Premenstrual Syndrome talks of wanting to “kill” her husband.

Awkward transitions or too little screen time trivialize other segments on beauty pageants for little girls, a woman minister, victims of violence who fight back, grandmothers arrested at an anti-nuclear protest and a support group of adoptive and birth mothers.

More time spent with fewer women might not have defined “the ‘80s woman”--a vast generalization--but might have offered the insight lacking here.