TV's Weirdly Gendered World

Dear George, 

Katja and my TV watching has been creeping upward since we retired.  That’s not surprising since we do have a lot more time on our hands.  And, between cable and Netflix, there are many more viewing possibilities than there used to be.  Americans watch a lot of TV — about 35 hours a week for the average adult (1).  Adults 65 and over watch more than any other age group, approximately 48 hours a week (2).  What has struck me for a long time is that the content of TV shows is more about gender than any other topic.  Recently I’ve been collecting brief plot summary statements from tvguide.com to illustrate some of these themes.  Here’s a sampling of  storylines from TV Guide, subdivided by “women”, “men”, and “women and men together”. 

Women

Piper has an epiphany 

Allison has to lose weight 

Peggy suffers from a migraine 

Mary Lou takes French lessons

Charlotte volunteers for the blind

Violet provides comfort to a friend 

Elena serves tilapia for Thanksgiving

Samantha is uneasy about holding hands

Bride Bridgette needs a dress to say yes in

Cindy uncovers a family secret — her adoption 

Stefanie sells makeup at school as a side business

An unflattering photo of Jade is posted on the internet 

Men 

Josh and his team search the Brazilian jungle for a giant anaconda

Jim sees a monster holding the lifeless body of his foster mother 

“Pharma Bro” jacks up the price of a life-saving drug 5000%

A guy asks a friend to shoot him because “I like the scars”

Mike and his poker pals bond during colonoscopy prep 

Chase and Jacoby struggle for command of the boat

A cross-dressing professor goes on a killing spree

Eli finds farming more than it’s cracked to be 

Alfie leads a lonely life hidden in a cave

Frenchy and Gee battle a cannibal

Hoyt is moved from death row 

Michael severs all family ties 

Women and Men Together 

A small-town beauty queen is terrorized by a wealthy would-be suitor

Katie’s ex hides video cameras and microphones in her home

A young woman’s ideal man has the heart of a monster

Christine feels intellectually inferior to Max’s friends

Sammy Jo is ready to wash Jeff out of her hair 

Diana learns the truth about Richard 

George gets a girlfriend (and a rash) 

A distracted Jeremy forgets Tasha’s birthday 

Hank butchers his marriage proposal to Karen

Bella and Will struggle to enjoy one another’s hobbies

Cooper confesses to Angela that he’s married with children 

An escapee from a mental institution aims to avenge a ruined romance 

Because it’s all familiar the examples may not be too surprising, but they do remind us how stereotypic, often sexist portrayals of women and men dominate the media.  Women are generally depicted as emotional, caring, concerned about beauty, worried about finding men, and engaged in domestic pursuits.  Men, meanwhile, are off in adventurous and dangerous pursuits, striving for power, and engaging in violence.  When women’s and men’s relationships or transactions are portrayed, they are often conflictful and on the verge of collapse, usually because of men being ne’er-do-wells. 

The examples I’ve given here, of course, haven’t been randomly selected and represent only a tiny percentage of the plot summaries of currently available TV shows.  Extensive social science research, however, paints a very similar picture.  UNC communications researcher Julia Wood (nyu) describes findings from empirical studies of TV and film content:   “Men are presented as hard, tough, independent, sexually aggressive, unafraid, violent, totally in control of all emotions, and-above all-in no way feminine…Women are portrayed as significantly younger and thinner than women in the population as a whole, and most are depicted as passive, dependent on men, and enmeshed in relationships or housework.”  (3)

Browsing in TV Guide is food for thought.  I doubt if we’ll stop watching TV.  However, it’s helpful to be conscious of what it is we’re watching.  Rather than reflecting reality, all this stuff creates a fantasy world which serves to reinforce traditional sex role expectations.   The viewer should beware.   (Actually I thought we had moved beyond this in the seventies.)

Love,

Dave

Sources:

(1) www.businessinsider.com, “The average American watches so much TV it’s almost a full-time job” 

(2) www.marketingcharts.com, “The State of Traditional TV: Updated with Q2 2017 Data” 

(3)  www.nyu.edu, Julia T. Wood.  (Dept. Communication, UNC)  “Gendered Media: The Influence of Media on Views of Gender.”