Q&A With Target Women’s Sarah Haskins

Sarah Haskins, a Second City Chicago alumni, became a blogger’s darling this summer with the launch of Target Woman, a special segment of the Current TV series Infomania. The semi-regular series takes aim at mass media’s exploitation of women’s issues, from yogurt commercials to Sarah Palin, and Haskins has become a new voice for mainstream feminism, as well as a case study in how one can attract both an online and offline audience. We spoke via phone — an edited transcript of our conversation follows.

NewTeeVee: What inspired the creation of Target Women?

Haskins: Well, I wanted to do an on-air piece in general, and so I was watching a bunch of different shows to hopefully generate some ideas. While I was watching TLC’s Secret Life of Soccer Moms, I saw all these yogurt commercials in it, and I was like “these are so dumb.” So at first I was just like “I want to do something on yogurt commercials.” And then I sort of made the broader concept of Target Women up after that.

NewTeeVee: I know you approach Target Women as just one segment of Infomania, but how often do you consider the web audience when working on a new piece?

Haskins: Obviously the web is a huge part of our distribution, but I don’t try to write for that. I try to do what’s funny first and smart second.

NewTeeVee: Are there pieces you feel like have played better on TV than on the web?

Haskins: I don’t know. If you can find and catch that elusive Current TV watcher, we can find out. I tell people that they can join an elite group of fans simply by tuning into InfoMania — new episodes every Thursday!

NewTeeVee: Do you feel like you reach more people on the web these days than on the Current netowrk?

Haskins: My guess is probably so, because web stuff lives in perpetuity — it’s like this space outside of time, where you’re able to discover older stuff.

NewTeeVee: Ever since Target Women launched, you’ve been getting a fair amount of press attention on NPR and other news outlets — do you feel like you’ve become a spokesperson for the intelligent female point of view online?

Haskins: I don’t know if I’ve become a spokesperson for it, but I certainly feel like I’ve, in some ways inadvertently, tapped into something that a lot of women were feeling and thinking about. It turns out that there’s this huge reservoir of women out there who also thought these [yogurt] commercials were ridiculous. Which wasn’t part of the plan — I knew that I would watch these with my friends and we’d all make fun of them. It’s definitely a good conversation to have started, and it’s cool that people want to watch this and feel connected to it.

NewTeeVee: How often do you feel like you get to applaud some depiction of women in media as positive?

Haskins: Well, the funny thing about what I’m watching is that I think a lot of it wants to be positive, but ends up being ridiculous. You know what I mean? The working woman who has it all, who has the family and everything — that’s actually a very positive depiction, but her perfect ease is sort of hilariously out of touch with real life.

NewTeeVee: How do you end up generating a lot of ideas for episodes? Is it just basic browsing around, or do people come to you with things?

Haskins: First we’ll look for stuff that’s targeted very heavily to women-focused demographic shows. We watch a lot of TV, and our two PAs, Zach and Jason, will go through The View and the fourth hour of The Today Show and pull out the commercials that run then. And then some MTV. Lotta lady commercials on MTV.

NewTeeVee: Is there anyone else who works on Target Women who you’d want to make note of being involved?

Haskins: Oh, absolutely. The editor, Dylan Osborne, is awesome: I come to him with all these ridiculous ideas and talk them through with him and he gives me some ideas for visual presentation — he’s great to work with. And our executive producer Jeff Plunkett also goes through the pieces with us — it’s always nice to have an outside eye on something. Sometimes I was going to cut lines because I felt like, “Oh, this sounds too preachy.” And Jeff would say “No, that’s the point, keep it in, keep going.”

NewTeeVee: When you say too preachy, how do you mean?

Haskins: I just don’t think you want to be too on the nose. It’s a fine line between making a joke and being “This is what I think is right!” I want the segments be more like jokes, less like admonitions.

NewTeeVee: Do you feel like it’s easier to say something with a joke than say it flat out? Or, rather, do you think it’s easier to hear?

Haskins: I think hear is better, and yeah, it’s the way I prefer to say things.

NewTeeVee: Is there any topic that you haven’t had the material or opportunity to cover yet?

Haskins: Everyone at Current is always very supportive, but I still want to figure out a way to do one on “frenemies” — that whole concept of “frenemies” in our culture.

NewTeeVee: What context do you mean it in, exactly?

Haskins: That’s the problem; everyone always needs me to explain it. You know how on The Hills everyone’s always frenemies? No. 1 — when did we start defining female friendships as frenemies? And No. 2 — these people aren’t your friends! This is not a valid cultural concept! I don’t know, though. Some of these things are just pet peeves that get stuck with me and then slowly die.

NewTeeVee: If you had to name one public enemy of Target Women, what would it be? or who would it be?

Haskins: It would be North Korea. That’s who it’d be. Just like the rest of the world, we look to them as a massive danger. Okay, and also Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But that’s it.