I suppose it’s nice for New York Giants running back Brandon Jacobs to apologize for telling Gisele Bunchen, the model who is married to New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady, that rather than expressing her upset about the Patriots’ Super Bowl loss that “She just needs to continue to stay cute and shut up.” But I’d rather he apologize to Gisele than to Brady:

“Given the fact that it’s a colleague of mine’s wife, I do apologize for saying that, because I shouldn’t have said that,” Jacobs said of Tom Brady’s spouse in an interview on “The Doug Gottlieb Show.” “It’s his wife and I should respect that just as much as anyone else.”…However, while Jacobs apologized for telling Bundchen to hush up, he refused to express any remorse about calling her cute, saying that Brady should “take that as a compliment.” “If he finds something wrong with that, then that’s his problem.”

Which means he really doesn’t get what he did, and why it was wrong. Jacobs’ comments were obnoxious not because he was impugning Tom Brady’s wife. They were obnoxious because they implied that the role of a woman was to be attractive, rather than to have opinions. The question is not whether Tom Brady has a problem with his wife being reduced to her looks. It’s whether Gisele does.

And I’ve honestly been dismayed by the idea that Gisele is obligated by contract or custom not to speak ill of her husband’s teammates or the team’s performance. Tom Brady is her husband, not her keeper. She is an independent woman who makes an income that does not leave her dependent on the Patriots. Whether she speaks publicly about his work is a matter for their marriage, not our judgement.

It’s an attitude that treats women who are married to athletes as if they’re like another set of women who are often treated as if they’re helpmeets first, and individuals second: political wives. No matter how accomplished Gisele or Hillary Clinton are in their own fields, as long as their husbands are or were preeminent figures in their fields, what Tom or Bill were up to was understood to be the priority—no matter what role those men feel comfortable having their wives take on. God forbid Gisele have opinions about football. God forbid Hillary have something to add on health care. I understand that it makes strategic sense, given the persistent and virulent sexism directed at women in politics, particularly those cast as if they’re malevolent powers behind the throne, for political wives to take on anodyne issues that are removed from the substance of the political mainstream. But that norm isn’t something we should be proud of.

Over at NPR’s Monkey See blog, Linda Holmes has a provocative essay up chronicling the decline of Liz Lemon, the harried comedy showrunner who is the star of NBC’s sitcom 30 Rock, from competent if overwhelmed woman to cringing child:

A recent storyline featuring James Marsden as Criss, Liz’s boyfriend who drove a hot-dog truck, was very reminiscent of Dennis the pager salesman. But this time, she didn’t break up with him because Jack gave her the side-eye and forced her to come to terms with the fact that she didn’t want him. She broke up with him because Jack appeared to her as an apparition — her spirit guide, basically — and mocked Criss, mostly for not having any money…Over the course of six seasons, Jack has been fully transformed into a condescending, all-knowing daddy, and Liz has been fully transformed into a needy little girl who is eternally terrified of displeasing him. She’s always had a grudging respect for him, but now she simply reveres him and trusts his judgment more than hers. She was once frazzled but smart, harried but competent, capable of wrangling a bunch of crazy people and then slumping at the end of the day, exhausted but minimally victorious. Now, she’s just dumb, incapable of making her own decisions, and her relationship with Jack is entirely out of balance.

For me, the tipping point with 30 Rock actually came last season when the show decided the next logical place to go in finding ways to be funny about Liz was to utterly sexually humiliate her. Liz was, at the time, dating a commercial pilot with the unfortunate name of Carol and an unfortunate moustache, played by Matt Damon, and they were having bedroom issues. Or, as Liz put it “I freaked out and my junk closed for business. It’s like Fort Knox down there.” The reason? An incident involving a Tom Jones poster, roller skates, the worst haircut anyone could bestow on a child, and a pair of flowered underpants. Liz can’t just have garden-variety intimacy problems: she has to be utterly freakish—and of course, to have Jack help her reach her breakthrough.

The decline of Liz Lemon may be a particular tragedy given how great 30 Rock once was. But when it comes to sex, it’s hardly unprecedented. A number of television comedies have decided to get laughs out of suggesting that their female leads are sexually freakish, and not in a Ludacris-approved kind of way. New Girl‘s done this to Jess twice. First, when she was finally about to sleep with her new boyfriend, the show had Jess overcome her jitters by getting her tangled up in ridiculous lingerie and then had her act out so many exaggerated versions of so many fetishes that she almost scared the poor man to death. More recently, Jess, in an effort to prove that her perennial optimism is always well-founded, ended up almost having a threesome with her creepy landlord. Her inability to read signals in any rational way—and her dancing around her bedroom doing jazz hands after the man proposed a threesome—were not the actions of a rational person.

And Parks and Recreation, which has done an admirable job of making its public servant heroine Leslie Knope into a sex symbol, had a weird slip last season when Leslie’s boss, Ron, discovered that she was dating their immediate superior, Ben. Her big secret was revealed when she accidentally dialed Ron during foreplay with Ben, a leadup that involved the two of them pretending to be historical weird leaders. Ron was disconcerted by the fact that Leslie had kept a secret from him, but the joke was clearly Leslie’s sexual proclivities.

Now, it’s not as if there’s an entirely clear double standard on these shows. On Parks and Recreation, Ron, normally a manly, independent libertarian is reduced to jelly and silliness by the sexual wiles of his ex-wives, to whom he is dangerously susceptible. Jess’s roommates on New Girl are not uniformly romantically successful. But Jack’s sexual quirks are generally treated as evidence of his prowess and manliness. When Liz is shocked that Jack’s girlfriend Avery likes a particular sex act, Jack explains that she appreciates it when it’s well-executed. And during his relationship with liberal Congresswoman C.C. Cunningham, he consistently credits for being sexually adventuresome. It’s too bad that someone like Leslie, who’s otherwise competent, aggressive, smart and attractive couldn’t get credit for sexual creativity rather than becoming the butt of jokes for having specific tastes.