Hogan, Katie. Women Take Care: Gender, Race, and the Culture of AIDS. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2001. 178 pp.

by Chris Bell

On December 1st, World AIDS Day, the Lifetime Network invariably broadcasts "special" episodes of its sitcom staples The Golden Girls and Designing Women. In the first show, Rose Nylund, portrayed by Betty White, applies for a life insurance policy and learns she might have contracted HIV from a blood transfusion years before. In the second program, the women who comprise the Sugarbaker design firm are asked to arrange a funeral for a friend dying of AIDS. What is notable in each of these instances is the support the women lend to the (potentially, in Nylund's case) AIDS-infected character. They rally around this individual, offering to provide for her/him without reserve. This example of women's selfless caretaking is the central concern of Women Take Care. In addition to problematizing the depiction of women as perpetual caregivers, Hogan describes how women are/not represented within the scope of AIDS discourse, and what that representation (or lack thereof) signals about our cultural climate.