The mass media is well known for its power to create the discriminating social system by producing misleading or simplified media representations of male and female and constructing the criteria for gender stereotypes (Ott 2010, p196). Sex and The City, a popular television series produced by Home Box Office since 1998, is recognized as a significant drama since it not only won a lot of awards but also became a cult hit. Unlike the other television shows which consolidated the stereotypes, the characters in Sex and the City go against the stereotype and leave an incredible mark on American TV history. Therefore, Sex and the City challenges female stereotype in American media and gives a picture of women who are not relegated by the two extremes. This article is going to analyze how Sex and the City obeys the gender stereotypes in four sections: active/passive, public/private, logical/emotional, and sexual subject/sexual object.
The women-centered TV series Sex and the City shows four taboo-breaking
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women’s vision of love, friendship, and sex. Carrie is a newspaper columnist and she writes about the relationship and sexual life. Samantha works in a public relation position and uses her physical attraction and personal charm (Jane Arthurs 2003, p84) as a tool to build her career. Miranda has a success career as a lawyer, and Charlotte works at an art gallery. During the six seasons, this drama emphasized the friendship between women, female individual independence, and the sex life freedom from a female perspective. In this show, women can be feminine and a feminist at the same time (Adriaens 2011, p6). They can be independent, have their own career, talk about sex in a straightforward way and have sex with whom they want, which only exist in stereotyping male aspect. Still, they can be fashionable and enjoy the privilege of being attractive. Obviously in today’s world, there still exist the stereotypes of male and female, but TV series such as Sex and the City challenges the opposite gender stereotyping by providing a combination. We can analyze the case by comparing Sex and the City with gendered stereotypes in American media in four ways: active/passive, public/private, logical/emotional, and sexual subject/sexual object (Ott 2010, p198). In North American media gender stereotyping, men tend to represent masculinity with physical and mental power whereas women are tied to ‘passive acceptance’ (Ott 2010, p198). In Disney’s most princess movies, for example, the princesses are innocent and helpless. Instead of finding a way to protect or save herself, a princess would rather wait until the prince shows up. It seems the vulnerable princess’s entire existence is revolved around a prince (Gordon 2015, p1), the representation of authority. However, in Sex and the City, the four women are not simply accepting the world, but actively becoming the boundaries themselves (Akass 2004, p70). As they were born in the 60s and grew up in an environment which feminism is like fluoride (Frith 2001, p71), they all believe that they have the power and right to choose, not accept. For instance, audiences can tell Miranda is portrayed as a masculine woman in the earlier seasons from the way she talks, dresses and behaves. Carrie also said in the episode 24, season 5 that she has the right to ‘choose, vote, dress how you want, sleep with whom you want, and have the kind of friendships you want.’ Each character in Sex and the City is active and strong women have freedom, opportunity, and the ability to be successful (Akass 2004, p70). Thus, this TV series redefined women can be powerful and have the right to choose. For public/private aspect, usually in a media sitcom, mid-age men are in the role of ‘family provider’ (Ott 2010, p200), and mid-age women are mostly housewives. Another comedy TV series I want to mention is Modern Family. At the first several seasons of this show, the two male characters Phil and Jay are depicted as successful businessmen, but Claire and Gloria, as their wives, are typical American housewives. In contrast, the four women in Sex and the City have their own career and they are successful in their careers. They graduate from Smith College and Harvard University and they treat their careers as self-expressions. Especially Carrie, she has been awarded for several times in the show for being an excellent writer. Also, Miranda’s Type A is a workaholic personality. She is a career-minded and ambitious lawyer from the beginning to the end of the show, but the men Miranda get married with, Steve Brady, was a bartender at the beginning. So in Sex and the City, the typical roles of thirty-year-old women and men switched, as women are family providers and men can be the less successful in the career. Another aspect of male stereotypes is supported by the image that men are logical.
They can make decisions and understand the world based on facts and logics. Alternatively, women can only be emotional and illogical. In the popular teen drama Gossip Girl, Chuck, a male character, is a businessmen and he handles the family business. On the other hand, his girlfriend Blair is an emotional girl whose everyday life is driven by her feelings and emotions. Every time she was unhappy, she would unleash her anger or sadness to people around her. On the contrary, even though the four women in Sex and the City do have their emotional moments, when it comes to making the decision, they can be as logical as men. For example, there are several times that Samantha and Carrie have to choose between their own life and their relationships. After analyzing the situations, both of them choose to keep their emotions in check and exude assertive, competitive, and independent
behaviors. The most obvious offbeat values in Sex and the City is the women’s thought on sex. Unlike sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother and Two and a Half Men, where only men are sexually powerful and have the freedom to have sex with multiple partners, Samantha in Sex and the City mostly take the initiative when it comes to sex (Akass,2004, p54). She transformed from a sexual object into a sexual subject. Other women in this show are also sexual subjects, as they have sex for the recreational purpose more than the relational purpose and they use sex toys and masturbations. In season1, Charlotte bought a vibrator for herself. Again, in Season 4, Miranda and Samantha use sex toys to find orgasm. They not only have the right to have sex for pleasure, but also talk about sex with one another and put them in the newspaper. They are free to experiment with sexuality and not being judged on this, which is way different from stereotype female. From 1998 till now, millions of audience watched Sex and the City and this TV series means more than a romantic sitcom. It is a model that tells women they can be powerful instead of vulnerable, have their own career instead of being a housewife, be logical and make a choice, and have sexual pleasure without being judged. It proved to millions of female that they should never limit themselves to the gender stereotype in American media and inspired them to be independent and empowered.
Michael Abernathy’s article “Male Bashing on TV” uses many television sources and percentages to explain how men are treated like idiots inside of the media. Abernathy is a television reviewer, cultural critic, and queer culture commentator (350). While Heather Havrilesky's article “TV’s New Wave of Women:Smart, Strong, Borderline Insane” is the opposite and uses television sources to explain how women are treated as smart yet crazy inside of the media. These two articles describe how men and women are portrayed differently in television shows and the media. The articles have smaller subtopics in common which are the portrayal of men and women in the media, the comparison of men and women in each article, and how Abernathy and Havrilesky want
On September 20, 1984 a show aired that changed the way we view gender roles on television. Television still perpetuates traditional gender stereotypes and in reflecting them TV reinforces them by presenting them as the norm (Chandler, 1). The Cosby Show, challenged the typical gender stereotyping of television, daring to go against the dominant social values of its time period. In its challenge of the dominant social view, the show redefined the portrayal of male and female roles in television. It redefined the gender role in the work place, in social expectations, and in household responsibilities. The Cosby Show supported Freidan in her view of “castigating the phony happy housewife heroine of the women’s magazines” (Douglas 136).
In American culture today, women continue the struggle of identifying what their roles in society are supposed to be. Our culture has been sending mixed messages to the modern day female, creating a sense of uneasiness to an already confusing and stressful world. Although women today are encouraged more than ever to be independent, educated, and successful, they are often times shamed for having done just that. Career driven females are frequently at risk of being labeled as bossy, unfeminine, or selfish for competing in many career paths that were once dominated by men. A popular medium in our culture such as television continues to have significant influences as to how people should aspire to live their lives. Viewers develop connections with relatable characters and to relationship dynamics displayed within their favorite shows. Fictional characters and relationships can ultimately influence a viewer’s fashion sense, social and political opinion, and attitude towards gender norms. Since the days of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeanie, where women were commonly portrayed as being the endearing mischievous housewife, television shows have evolved in order to reflect real life women who were becoming increasingly more independent, educated, and career oriented throughout the subsequent decades. New genres of television are introduced, such as the workplace comedy, where women are not only career oriented, but eventually transition into positions of power.
Even as the media redefines the roles both genders play at home and in the workforce, a number of traditional stereotypes continue to dominate television screens. Despite the enormous progress society has made to empower women, traditional gender stereotypes continue to thrive in our culture today. This phenomenon is apparent in”Big Baby,” where all parties are represented equally by the dynamic characters of Dr. Cuddy, Dr. Wilson, and Dr. House . To choose to do otherwise would mean that the television show does not portray American pop-culture honestly.
Today, love, sex and romance are three main topics that presented in media as main themes discuss in contemporary popular culture. Social media is important in shaping audience value about feminism through the framework of contemporary media like films, magazines, plays, advertisements, TV shows, graphic novels, etc. The television show “Sex and the City” incorporates “pop feminism” that influences many lives of women. Sex and the City is originally talking about four single thirty-something women living in Manhattan. They are coming to New York in order to seek “love and labels” (Sex and the City). The main theme of Sex and the City is concentrating on contemporary American woman’s conception of sex, love, and romance. As we learned from lecture, sex, love, and romance have a history; they are different in different cultures; they are shaped by gender, class, race, ethnicity, nation, ability, and other differences (Lecture Notes). Sex and the City is focusing on modern American woman’s experiences and their thinks with sex, love, and romance. The four main women characters in Sex and the City represent diversity of gender, class, race, ethnicity, religion, age, able-bodiedness through their different experience and expectations of their life (Lecture Notes). Sex and the City represents that the feminism notions of sex, love, and romance are socially constructed, and this social construction of sex, love and romance are featured in these female characters’ personalities.
HBO's Sex and the City has become a cultural icon in its 6 seasons of running. Based on Candace Bushnell's racy book Sex and the City, the show exhibits an unprecedented example of the sexual prowess of women over the age of 35. The result is an immense viewing audience and an evolving view on the "old maid" stigma that a woman's chances of finding love are significantly reduced after thirty-five. In this paper, we will closely analyze the characters and themes of Sex and the City to explain the significance of what the show represents in American culture.
Girls are supposed to play with dolls, wear pink, and grow up to become princesses. Boys are suppose to play with cars, wear blue, and become firefighters and policemen. These are just some of the common gender stereotypes that children grow up to hear. Interactions with toys are one of the entryway to different aspects of cognitive development and socialism in early childhood. As children move through development they begin to develop different gender roles and gender stereotypes that are influenced by their peers and caregivers. (Chick, Heilman-Houser, & Hunter, 2002; Freeman, 2007; Leaper, 2000)
A common trend in the entertainment industry today is the objectification of women in society. Sexualizing women are seen in media such as; movies, advertisement, television show and music video, where their main focus is providing the audience with an image of women as sexual objects rather than a human. This is detrimental to society since the media is producing social stereotypes for both genders, which can further result in corrupted social habits. Objectification in media are more focused on females than male, these false images of women leave individuals with the wrong idea of the opposite sex. As media continuously use sexual contents regarding women, the audience starts underestimating women. Specifically movies, it allows media to shape the culture’s idea of romance, sex and what seems
Gender stereotypes and biasses exist in media. In most situations, women are associated with more negative stereotypes and their portrayals can “undermine their presence by being “hyper-attractive” or “hyper-sexual” and/or passive” (Smith, 2008). In The Wolf of Wall Street women are objectified. They are treated
You are at an interview, the interviewer says that you are not qualified for the job because of your gender. What would you say? Sexism has caused stereotypes, and harassment in the workforce, and professional sports, therefore people should know more about sexism. Media is a powerful tool of communication, it produces both negative and positive impacts on society.
The work's topicality is characterized by the existence of the gender stereotypes in society, having generalization, and does not reflect individual differences in the human categories. Meanwhile, there is still discrimination on the labour market, human trafficking, sexual harassment, violence, women and men roles and their places in the family. Mass media offers us the reality, reduces the distance, but we still can see the negative aspects too. TV cultivates gender stereotypes, offering ideas about gender, relationships and ways for living. Such media ideas attach importance to many people in the society. Consequently, it is quite important identify gender stereotypes in the media, in order to prevent false views relating to gender stereotypes.
The media, through its many outlets, has a lasting effect on the values and social structure evident in modern day society. Television, in particular, has the ability to influence the social structure of society with its subjective content. As Dwight E. Brooks and Lisa P. Hébert write in their article, “GENDER, RACE, AND MEDIA REPRESENTATION”, the basis of our accepted social identities is heavily controlled by the media we consume. One of the social identities that is heavily influenced is gender: Brooks and Hébert conclude, “While sex differences are rooted in biology, how we come to understand and perform gender is based on culture” (Brooks, Hébert 297). With gender being shaped so profusely by our culture, it is important to be aware of how social identities, such as gender, are being constructed in the media.
Another major factor that influences millions of impressionable females and males is television. Not only does the television teach each sex how to act, it also shows how one sex should expect the other sex to act. In the current television broadcasting, stereotypical behavior goes from programming for the very small to adult audiences. In this broadcasting range, females are portrayed as motherly, passive and innocent, sex objects, or they are overlooked completely or seen as unimportant entities. Stereotyping women is not only rampant in the adult world; it also flourishes in the kiddie universe as well.
An article by Christina N Baker, Images of Women’s Sexuality in Advertisements: A content Analysis of Black And White Oriented Women’s and Men’s Magazine emphasizes on how women’s are portrayed in media such as advertisements and Magazine. The author analyzes how media has a huge impact in our society today; as a result, it has an influence on race and gender role between men and women.
Gender stereotyping has been ongoing throughout history. The media has been distorting views by representing gender unrealistically and inaccurately. It created an image of what "masculinity" or "femininity" should be like and this leads to the image being "naturalized" in a way (Gail and Humez 2014). The media also attempts to shape their viewers into something ‘desirable’ to the norm. This essay will focus on the negative impacts of gender-related media stereotypes by looking at the pressures the media sets on both women and men, and also considering the impacts on children.