How<em> Chilling Adventures of Sabrina</em> Thinks About Female Power
In September, as the future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh gave testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about allegations of sexual assault leveled against him, a photographer present captured a moment that instantly went viral. The actress Alyssa Milano, her hair severely swept up in a topknot, lowered her black-framed glasses in the hearing room to stare intently at Kavanaugh’s back. The Entertainment Tonight writer Meredith B. Kile posted the photo on Twitter, adding, “I’ve never wished so hard that Alyssa Milano was a real witch.”
Milano, of course, played Phoebe Halliwell, one of three witch sisters in the WB’s long-running supernatural drama . While the question of that show’s authentic feminist credentials in the wake of the CW’s recent reboot, there’s something undeniably thrilling about the idea of Milano’s real activist self endowed with the powers of her most famous character. In a moment when so many women seem to feel powerless—when speaking out, the only option they have for seeking justice,—the fantasy of witchhood
