New Girl May Have Given Us the Best Definition of Inclusive Feminism Ever

By Vivian Kane | Miscellaneous | December 3, 2014 |

There was a LOT of good stuff going on in last night’s New Girl. It was a rare episode from this season (maybe the only episode from this season) in which every story line was fantastic. Part of that may have been because the characters were all mixed together, instead of separated into the traditional sitcom A and B plots. Jess and Cece were “girl fighting,” while Coach and Schmidt boy-fought and also tried to worm their way into the girl fighting. Nick, I guess, had a separate story (that of his Cool Girl, possibly homeless new girlfriend), but Winston wove his way into both story lines in a way to make the whole thing unusually fluid. Anyway, the episode, titled “Girl Fight” centered around the fact that boys fight like this:

—while girls fight like this:

It easily could have been no more than a 90s stand-up comedy routine. But these characters have become so real and so comfortable over the last four years that— much like when Nick pretended to be gay in order to help Jess get “get her biscuits“— they are often much more than the sum of their clichés. Last night’s Jess was also insistent that she too was more than a cliché, and gave us this perfect description of how she personally identifies as a feminist.