The timelessly quotable fury of Designing Women’s Julia Sugarbaker, in 5 episodes

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Designing Women, one of the seminal “four female friends” shows on television, finally made its streaming debut on Hulu at the end of last month. For the uninitiated, the series followed the lives of Julia Sugarbaker (Dixie Carter), Suzanne Sugarbaker (Delta Burke), Mary Jo Shively (Annie Potts), Charlene Frazier (Jean Smart), and Anthony Bouvier (Mesach Taylor) as they ran an interior decorating firm in Atlanta and simultaneously took on nearly every major social issue of the day. The series, which ran from 1986 to 1993, was written by the great Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, whose entire career was derailed by former CBS president and serial sexual harasser Les Moonves, on account of his personal distaste for mouthy women. While everyone in the ensemble cast was fantastic—particularly veteran character actor Alice Ghostley—one of the things the show is best remembered for is the passionate feminist rants of one Ms. Julia Sugarbaker, a woman who did not know the meaning of the term esprit d’escalier.

While there are obvious differences between the feminism of 2019 and the feminism of a show that premiered in 1986, there is something to be said for an unapologetically feminist character with absolutely no qualms about taking a mother****er down when necessary. And there is certainly something extremely cathartic about watching it happen. Curiously enough, Dixie Carter, the actress who played Julia Sugarbaker, was actually a Republican (though a supporter of LGBTQ+ rights), and reportedly had it written into her contract that for every speech she delivered that she disagreed with, she would get to sing in a later episode. But however Carter may have felt personally, she certainly brought it on screen, inspiring a generation of women in the process. So here are some of the best moments from Julia “The Best Of The Big Shouldered Broads” Sugarbaker.