THE ‘80s A Special Report :...

How a low, fat, indolent, sarcastic and monotonous figure should become such a superstar and nearly sole primetime support of a major TV network is one of the imponderables of the decade.

Roseanne is part of the reactive fallout of the feminist movement’s surface manifestations. She’s not about to punish herself with a Jane Fonda regimen in order to slip into a breezy dressed-for-success look and hit the morning gridlock. And for that reason she speaks not only to those countless American women whose overweight is a measure of loneliness and unhappiness and locked-in lives, but for other women as well--women who’re tired of being manipulated by the mass media into feeling inferior if they don’t buy into any New Look, and tired of being yelled at by the ideologues who claim to speak for them.

The Taste Makers project was edited by David Fox, assistant Sunday Calendar editor.