When Desperate Housewives first aired in October of 2004 on ABC television network, the controversial pilot episode sparked interest in over twenty-five million viewers. On a seemingly quiet, average suburban street titled Wisteria Lane, four women – Lynette Scavo, Gabrielle Solis, Bree Van de Kamp, and Susan Mayer – became instantly connected by the suicide of Mary-Alice Young, a fellow neighbor and poker club member. While the reason behind Mary-Alice’s death remained unknown for several seasons, the show began to unfold a juicy plot chocked full of the stereotypical drama of suburbia; intermixed between love triangles and tragic affairs, more unusual and mysterious events began to occur. Although Desperate Housewives attempts to portray gender equality and society’s ever-altering perception of gender through the use of jobs, relationships, and melodramatic occurrences, this façade does little to hide the traditional roles of each gender and how those roles complicate the daily life of the families of Wisteria Lane. Thinking traditionally, certain careers women commonly choose come to mind. Curiously enough, the careers of the women on Wisteria Lane entertain those exact jobs. Susan Mayer, a young mother of a school-aged boy, is sporadically employed as an art teacher. When she gets fired from a conservative private school for being too outspoken, her family loses their house and Susan takes up making soft-core porn to supplement her husband’s income. Bree, a divorced and fiercely independent redhead, owns her own catering business. Don’t be fooled by this seeming break in traditional gender roles; writers try to give her more job equality by making her an powerful owner, but the fact that she owns a food business, which is t... ... middle of paper ... ...e luxurious scandal of a middle-class life, but once all of the drama is stripped away, the author of the show makes it perfectly clear that suburbia has its benefits and consequences. Despite 25 million viewers weekly, the producers of the show have decided to pull the plug on what has become an American pastime through its seven previous seasons. The story of the four main women – Lynette, Gabrielle, Bree, and Susan – may be ending, but the character roles the actresses have created will continue to portray gender roles for decades to come. Works Cited Hill, Lisa. “Gender and Genre: Situating Desperate Housewives.” Journal of Popular Film & Television 38.4 (2010): 164-72. Print. McCabe, Janet, and Akass, Kim, eds. Reading 'Desperate Housewives': Beyond the White Picket Fence. London: I.B. Tauris, 2006. Print.
The author explores some stereotypes based on what types of jobs are more women’s type of jobs or more manly jobs. Careers such as carpenters and truck drivers are all almost exclusively male jobs, whereas careers in nursing or secretary work are all almost exclusively a woman’s type of work. Since the 1970’s, women have made head way into male dominated jobs. However, the author states that even though women have made it into male dominated jobs, this is not true for the reverse situation. The woman type jobs are still almost exclusively women’s jobs with men making little entry into them.
The two works of literature nudging at the idea of women and their roles as domestic laborers were the works of Zora Neale Hurston in her short story “Sweat”, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Whatever the setting may be, whether it is the 1920’s with a woman putting her blood, sweat and tears into her job to provide for herself and her husband, or the 1890’s where a new mother is forced to stay at home and not express herself to her full potential, women have been forced into these boxes of what is and is not acceptable to do as a woman working or living at home. “Sweat” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” draw attention to suppressing a woman’s freedom to work along with suppressing a woman’s freedom to act upon her
It is as if a window finally cracks open revealing the sun’s rays brightening with the truth that men and women experience different challenges. Deborah Tannen’s Marked Women has to face the music when applied to Virginia Woolf’s Professions for Women. In Tannen’s essay the claim that “[t]here is no unmarked women” has trouble withstanding but manages to hold up Woolf’s position of the battle women fought against the traditional norm to the freedom they can possess.
Media outlets during the post-identity era would depict women in the workplace but did not underline any of the issues they faced in corporate America such as doubt and sexual harassment. In a scene from “Legally Blonde” Elle is having a discussion with Warner on how much harder law school will be when she’s taking on both classes and Callahan’s (her professors) internship to which he exclaims, “Oh, Elle, you’re never gonna get the grades to qualify for one of those spots.” Warner believes that woman can not posses such feminine qualities and still be successful which illustrates Elle’s struggle to be taken seriously in corporate America. Her character is combating the image of feminine women not being able to excel in such a respectable career fields (lawyer). In another incident Elle deals with a common issue “feminine” women deal with in the workplace, sexual harassment. She encounters this problem when her professor, Callahan, attempts to make a sexual proposition toward her so she can guarantee a spot on next year 's summer internship. Elle is completely taken aback by Callahan 's offer and handles it in a realistic way when she becomes so uncomfortable and discouraged that she contemplates quitting law school. These two scenes demonstrate how women are not exposed to the same working environment as men and the negative effect
“This is the true story, of seven strangers, picked to live in a house, and have their lives taped, to find out what happens when people stop being polite, and start getting real”(MTV). This marks the beginning of MTV’s reality show, The Real World. The show takes 7 strangers, puts them in a trendy luxurious home, taping them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for about 4 months. The cameras capture petty arguments, late night hook ups, and pure laziness. How could this not be real? There are not many people that can live in an expensive home while laying around all day, and partying all night with little work involved. The Real World is a display of 18-24 year olds, typecasted to have their most extreme stereotypical qualities blown out of proportion for the world to see.
For a large part of the history of TV sitcoms women have been portrayed as mothers or as having to fulfill the woman's role in the private sphere. Family based sitcoms were one of the forms of sitcom that keep women in these roles, but what is interesting is that even in other forms of sitcoms women do not truly escape these roles. Sitcoms, like Sex and the City and Murphy Brown showcase women whom have seemingly escaped these roles, by showing liberated women, but that does not mean that both do not fall into the gender role showcased in family sitcoms. It draws the similarities between ensemble sitcoms and family sitcoms when it comes down to the role of women. The starring women in both Sex and the City and Murphy Brown, and even the Mary
In America women have gone through so many social norms that has affected them throughout a lifetime. Since then with the changes, mass media got involved in this type of movement. American culture shifted where women where becoming professionals in the work force, more independent and less likely to marry. As a result, television networks created a series of shows to expose and associate the female audience to the TV shows. From Charlies Angels to Sex in the City and for our present time Nashville show, incorporate feminism to be shown in the small screen, in every decade shows exhibited the 3 feminist movement waves. For instance, during the 90s the 3rd wave of feminism was represented through Television by revealing female sexuality
American Broadcasting Company's sitcom, Modern Family, debuted in 2009 and is in its sixth season. It was met with critical acclaim and good ratings (Modern Family). The show airs once per week on the ABC network (ABC shows schedule). The show attempts to portray the humor behind three different families of varying composition. However, Modern Family’s attempt at giving an honest portrayal of the titular modern family falls short and instead relies upon tired tropes and clichés to derive its humor. Modern Family does not attempt to depict the state of gender roles in today’s society, sadly falling back on old gender standards found in sitcoms since their start.
Katherine Mansfield belongs to a group of female authors that have used their financial resources and social standing to critique the patriarchal status quo. Like Virginia Woolf, Mansfield was socioeconomically privileged enough to write influential texts that have been deemed as ‘proto-feminist’ before the initial feminist movements. The progressive era in which Mansfield writes proves to be especially problematic because, “[w]hile the Modernist tradition typically undermined middle-class values, women … did not have the recognized rights necessary to fully embrace the liberation from the[se] values” (Martin 69). Her short stories emphasized particular facets of female oppression, ranging from gendered social inequality to economic classism, and it is apparent that “[p]oor or rich, single or married, Mansfield’s women characters are all victims of their society” (Aihong 101). Mansfield’s short stories, “The Garden Party” and “Miss Brill”, represent the feminist struggle to identify traditional patriarchy as an inherent caste system in modernity. This notion is exemplified through the social bonds women create, the naïve innocence associated with the upper classes, and the purposeful dehumanization of women through oppressive patriarchal methods. By examining the female characters in “The Garden Party” and “Miss Brill”, it is evident that their relationships with other characters and themselves notify the reader of their encultured classist preconceptions, which is beneficial to analyze before discussing the sources of oppression.
I first became aware of Jill Soloway when watching a sex scene in the television show “Six Feet Under” and thinking to myself – “a man didn’t write that”. Looking her up on the imdb, I found her to be the writer of the episode and a long standing writer on the show. I also discovered the YouTube series of clips of a speech she made to the “National Organization of Women” that I have since forwarded to every female writer-friend I have. Hers is a voice that is changing the landscape for women in American
For instance, Paradise and Moriarty, along with surrounding male characters, engage in intellectual conversations regarding jazz music, philosophy and literature. With that said, female characters are “left outside the intellectual and decision-making sphere of the males” (Olsson 4-5). As a result, Kerouac audaciously depicts women as immensely lacking depth and intellectual ability, ultimately presenting women as tedious creatures capable only of fulfilling sexual desires. In addition, the description of Ed Wall’s wife, an acquaintance of Sal, further reiterates the absolute notion of female inferiority: “his [Ed] young wife prepared a magnificent spread in the big ranch kitchen … she was a well-built blonde but like all women who live in the wide spaces she complained a little of the boredom” (Kerouac 229). Essentially, Sal’s depiction of Ed Wall’s wife epitomizes Kerouac’s perception of women: they are a gender trapped within a male dominated hierarchy, isolated from social conventions and reduced to “unimportant housewives” (Olsson
Desperate Housewives goes behind the scenes into the secret lives of housewives in a perfect suburb. From the outside, everything looks perfect: perfect family houses with the white picket fence, well-kept yards, and happy families. The show tells the story of a group of girlfriends in the 40s and their lives. They all follow the rules of their gender by taking care of their families and husbands as the job of a typical housewife. The husbands, while the show isn’t featured on them, have most power over the household, while the wives work under them. On the show, there is Lynette (Felicity Huffman), who quit her high powered job to stay home to take care of her children, even though she was making more than her husband. Bree (Marcia Cross), another stay at home mom, is a duplicate of Martha Stewart and known for her perfectionism. Susan (Teri Hatcher) is a divorced mother and shares custody of her daughter with her ex. Gabrielle (Eva Longoria) is an ex-model with a rich husband and really nice house and stays home wh...
One Life to Live is a soap opera broadcasted on the ABC channel on the weekdays. I started to watch this show when I was a sophomore in high school, and when I used to come home from school, my mom would be watching it. That is how I got addicted to it. The story takes place in a town called Llanview. One Life to Live appeals to many viewers because the show keeps the viewers hanging onto the episode’s next scene.
Desperate Housewives is a fictional based show about four women known as Susan Mayer, Lynette Scavo, Bree Van De Kamp, and Gabrielle Solis. They live in what most consider a “normal” suburban area; however, with each episode a secret or mystery is told and unfolded. These mysteries may come in the form of a death or a new person moving onto Wisteria lane. Together viewers watch as these housewives manage to not only solve these mysteries but also deal with their, work, children, each other and romantic lives. Although these four w...
In conclusion, David Lodge managed to embody the concrete term of feminism. Through the character of Robyn Penrose, he creates the breakup of the traditional Victorian image of woman.“ `There are lots of things I wouldn 't do. I wouldn 't work in a factory. I wouldn 't work in a bank. I wouldn 't be a housewife. When I think of most people 's lives, especially women 's lives, I don 't know how they bear it. ' `Someone has to do those jobs, ' said Vic. `That 's what 's so depressing. ' ”(Lodge