Sitcom Singles: The Differential Portrayal of Single Men and Women in the Modern American Sitcom

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The average America watches more than 150 hours of television every month, or about five hours each day (“Americans,” 2009). Of the 25 top-rated shows for the week of February 8-14, 2010, six were sitcoms, averaging 5.84 million live viewers each (Seidman, 2010), to say nothing for the millions more who watched later on the Internet or their Digital Video Recorders. The modern sitcom is an undeniable force in America, and its influence extends beyond giving viewers new jokes to repeat at the water cooler the next day: whether Americans realize it or not, the media continues to socialize them, even as adults. It may appear at first glance that sitcoms are a relatively benign force in entertainment. However, the modern sitcom is more than just a compilation of one-liners and running gags. It is an agent of gender socialization, reinforcing age-old stereotypes and sending concrete messages about how, and who, to be. While in reality, people of both sexes have myriad personality traits that do not fall neatly along gender lines, the sitcom spurns this diversity in favor of representing the same characters again and again: sex-crazed, domestically incompetent single men enjoying their lives as wild bachelors, and neurotic, lonely, and insecure single women pining desperately to settle down with Prince Charming and have babies. Sitcoms reinforce our ideas about what it is “normal” to be, and perhaps more importantly feed us inaccurate ideas about the opposite sex: that women are marriage-crazed, high-maintenance, and obsessed with the ticking of their biological clocks, while men are hapless sex addicts whose motives can’t be trusted. The way that singles are portrayed in sitcoms is harmful to viewers’ understanding of themselves...

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... as a society, we are still allowing, even encouraging, the reproduction of the patriarchy through our choice of entertainment. We are allowing ourselves to be socialized into old-fashioned, out-of-date roles. While sitcoms make us laugh and provide us an escape from our troubles, they may be creating problems all their own – problems that, as a society, we cannot easily escape from. Certainly, that is no laughing matter.

Works Cited
Americans watching more tv than ever; web and mobile video up too. (2009, May 20). Retrieved from http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/americans-watching-more-tv-than- ever/

Seidman, R. (2010, February 17). TV ratings top 25: Olympics and and American idol battle for weekly supremacy. Retrieved from http://tvbythenumbers.com/2010/02/17/tv-ratings-top- 25-olympics-and-american-idol-battle-for-weekly-supremacy/42196

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