The Ladies of STOP ERA in Mrs. America. Beware of spoilers.
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Mary Frances Reed
Mary Frances Reed
Played By: Melinda Page Hamilton
A STOP ERA supporter from Louisiana who openly dislikes Alice after the latter shows her disgust for Mary Frances's attitudes towards Black people.
- '70s Hair: Wears her hair long and bouffant-ish in 1972 and her second appearance in 1977 has her with subdued Farrah Fawcett-esque waves.
- Female Misogynist: She believes that men and women are meant to be separate from one another, this attitude also is reflected in her attitudes towards people of color.
- Hate Sink: She is sexist, racist, unpleasant, rude to Alice, petty, and ignorant and the only reason Phyllis keeps her on is because she is a subscriber to her newsletter and has a lot of followers in-universe.
- Heteronormative Crusader: She bitterly complains of feminists as "commie lesbians".
- Lower-Class Lout: Implied when she is about to leave STOP ERA after Alice tells her off for being a virulent racist and tells Phyllis that they "don't need your fancy college words to keep the ERA out of our state" and is implied to be taking money from outside Right Wing groups like the Ku Klux Klan or The John Birch Society.
- Obnoxious Entitled Housewife: She ticks off almost every trait off this trope's game book. Racist, homophobic, a Moral Guardian who is interested in stalling progress for her fellow women, suspicious of outsiders and other women who don't fit her narrow worldview, and behaves as an Alpha Bitch to Alice.
- Villain with Good Publicity: One reason that Phyllis would not kick her out despite making virulently racist comments is that Mary Frances is an effective organizer and is very well liked, actually when Alice calls her out for her bigotry, she is followed by several women which soon gets Phyllis making concessions to keep them in the group.
Jacquie Davison
Jacquie Davison
Played By: Samantha Espie
An Arizona STOP ERA supporter who has her group Happiness Of Womanhood (HOW)and possesses less than enlightened attitudes towards people of color.
- '70s Hair: Maintains buoyant, blond and frosted perms well into the decade.
- Absurdly Youthful Mother: In Shirley, she is 35 years old and became a grandmother.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Those embroidered pillows are aesthetically pleasing but unlike the baked goods and jams that the other anti-feminists make, the men they are persuading with these gifts have less use for pink-embroidered pillows than with items they can consume.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: Alice jokes that the impractical but pretty pillows are supposed to make the legislators think of Jacquie's large breasts.
- Dumb Blonde: She isn't very intellectual, doesn't think things through (like the embroidered pillows she gives politicians to vote against the ERA), small-minded, and she calls her speech "folksy" and doesn't ponder how bigoted their cause comes across as.
- Female Misogynist: She is opposed to the ERA, full stop, and in real life started a group called Happiness Of Womanhood (HOW)
. - Flashy Protagonists, Bland Extras: Averted, in a cast full of 1970s Costume Porn, Jacquie manages to stand out from the more conservative dressed housewives in her boots and skirts, ruffles, and flirty and eye-catching looks.
- Hero of Another Story: Not for her politics but for her journey involving cancer, even beating it around the time she was campaigning against feminism.
- Hypocrite: Campaigns against women's rights and writes books, away from home where she feels women's proper place is in.
- Pimped-Out Dress: Her first appearance is in full makeup, permed blonde hair, and a ruffled dress that emphasizes her femininity and makes her stand out from the more subdued women at the STOP ERA convention.
- Pink Is Feminine: In Houston, she wears a pink ensemble with a light-colored, ruffled blouse with long full sleeves and a pink skirt to highlight her femininity as a jab against the feminist women at the convention. She even uses pink thread to stitch her pillows.
- Proud Beauty: She is the most flirtatiously dressed of the anti-feminists and focuses on her hair, makeup, breasts, and youth. In Real Life, as head of "Happiness Of Womanhood" urged housewives to avoid looking frumpy as to elevate the image of the homemaker.
- Racist Grandma: Her language isn't as racially charged as Mary Frances but she isn't concerned about the virulent racism and she seems to affirm Mary Frances's favorable comment about the "help" in the hotel they are gathering in are white. She is also willing to oppose all feminist resolutions (even the ones helping minority women) just so she doesn't "give the libbers an inch".
- Textile Work Is Feminine: She stitches beautiful white silk pillows to give politicians in pink thread reading "You Make the Living and We'll Make Life Worth Living" to convince them to vote against the ERA.
- Vanity Is Feminine: She is noted by Alice and Phyllis to be quite vain about her appearance and of being a young grandmother.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The last we see of her is in "Houston" and history revealed that she has written books like ''Cancer Winner'' after surviving Melanoma and ''I Am A Housewife'' before dying in 2013 from a heart attack.
Lottie Beth Hobbs
Lottie Beth Hobbs
Played By: Cindy Drummond
An Evangelical STOP ERA supporter who runs her own group in Texas, Women Who Want To Be Women, and develops a uneasy alliance with the Catholic Phyllis.
- '60s Hair: Has a poufy bouffant.
- Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence: She hates the feminist movement and wants to see abortion doctors and gay people executed. She even tells Phyllis that being a good Christian means loving what God loves and "hating what God hates".
- The Fundamentalist: She is a member of the Church of Christ, a patriarchal evangelical Christian denomination that believes that men are the head of the household and she hates: feminists, abortion doctors, gay people, battered women.
- Heteronormative Crusader: She tells Phyllis she wants to see gay people be executed along with abortion doctors.
- Hunting Is Evil: Lottie Beth Hobbs is shown shooting at a deer while discussing with Phyllis Schlafly about the need to hate.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Seems to glory in the gory anti-abortion propaganda, wants to see certain undesirables executed, tells Phyllis that in order to love properly you have to hate, and is excited about a bomb threat at the anti-ERA gala.
- Pink Is Feminine: Her group, Women Who Want to be Women (WWWW or the W's) invoke this by distributing pink flyers at beauty salons and churches to urge opposition to the ERA, the Feminist movement, and Gay Rights. They were referred to as "the Pink Ladies" by Mother Jones magazine.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: In a show where viewers are urged to find some socially regressive characters as sympathetic (Pamela), likable and relatable (Alice), seen with a Gray-and-Gray Morality lens (Phyllis), or amusing (Rosemary), Lottie Beth comes off as even more vile than the racist Mary Frances and even scarier, urging Phyllis that you have to "love what God loves and hate what God hates" and is implied to be a white supremacist or sympathetic to these groups. She is also unsympathetic to the plight of women who may need the ERA to improve their lives (like battered women) and has genocidal feelings towards gay people.
- Toxic Friend Influence: Somehow she is more narrow-minded, bigoted, sexist, demeaning, negative than most of the anti-feminist women. She is even implied to support White Supremacists and encouraged Phyllis to hate.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: In Real Life, she got an appointment to the Reagan Administration on the Councils for Family Values and National Policy before dying in 2016 (same year as Phyllis).
Representative Phil Crane
Representative Phil Crane
Played By: James Marsden
A Right Wing representative from Illinois who supports Phyllis in her efforts against the ERA and shares some sexual tension with Phyllis.
- '70s Hair: Has the popular "Dry Look" conservative cuts of the era.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: One of Phyllis's outward allies in politics, who belittles her intelligence and uses her for his and his peers' gain.
- Really Gets Around: Aside from his flirtations with Phyllis, he is rumored to have been sleeping with a number of young women at his house, with his wife's approval.
- Stay in the Kitchen: He holds a very chauvinistic view of women, even of Phyllis.
- Will They or Won't They?: He has sexual tension with Phyllis, who flirts with him and uses him as an ally they don't.
Ann Patterson
Ann Patterson
Played By: Teresa Pavlinek
Phyllis's friend from Oklahoma, an ERA opponent who uses a lot of religious language.
- '60s Hair: In her first appearance, she is seen wearing her hair in a short, curly helmet style.
- '70s Hair: By 1977, she wears her hair in a long, feathered style of the era.
- Female Misogynist: She is a privileged housewife from Oklahoma who feels threatened by the rise of feminism and equal opportunities for all women to have equal job opportunities and express themselves differently than what they were socialized to act like from childhood and for minorities to gain human rights (like lesbians).
- Housewife: Her occupation and her first speaking scene has her in front of the tv talking with Phyllis on the phone while busying herself.
- Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: She is a traditionally feminine woman with pale skin and super-dark hair.
- With Friends Like These...: She is a friend of Phyllis but Phyllis shows she looks down at her and is offended that Ann is taking credit for stopping the ratification of the ERA in Oklahoma after reading Phyllis's newsletter and passing it around.
