Rosie to Lucy an Analysis of Today\'s

¶ … Rosie to Lucy

An Analysis of Today's TV Sitcom, Media, and Reality

As is noted in "From Rosie to Lucy," Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique was, to some extent, concerned about the image of woman as presented by the mass media. What Friedan reported was a kind of transformation from the woman of the 30s in magazines like Ladies Home Journal into the woman of the 50s -- the kind of hare-brained ditz of I Love Lucy. This paper will look at that relationship that struck Friedan so forcefully -- the relationship between media and reality -- and it will also argue that media tends to manipulate gender codes.

What Friedan observed in the magazines of the 30s showed a professional woman much like the nurses of Florence Nightingale's nurse corps. She was devoted to an activity that was respected and needed. What Friedan observed in the television sitcoms of the 50s was something else entirely: men and women were degraded: the men were portrayed as clueless but charming, and the women were portrayed as "young and frivolous, almost childlike; fluffy and feminine; passive; gaily content in a world of bedroom and kitchen, sex, babies, and home." The reality of the 1950s, Friedan suggested, was being shaped by the way the media was representing gender codes. Friedan, ultimately, would begin a revolution against the 50s media representations that become known as the Woman's Movement -- but that Movement, to a large degree, has turned into something quite different in both reality and in today's media.

If the woman of 1950s television was an idealized form that never really existed and only served to create a shallow, superficial, and unsustainable environment that would be rejected in the 60s, then the woman of today's TV sitcom is, in a way, a combination of the powerful, professional woman of the 30s; the soft, feminine woman of the 50s; and the sexually liberated, somewhat vulgarized and crass representation of the woman of today, acting like the crude men of yesterday's sitcoms. Today, we witness the rise of sexy lesbian dramas like The L Word, or the realities of teenage pregnancy in The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

The once famous parent-couples of 50s and 60s television are gone: today's sitcoms focus on teens and young, professional adults, whose lives are relatively free of the kind of malaise Walker Percy described in his works of fiction in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. While the media fails to represent a realistic parent-couple in today's TV sitcoms, today's parents are not so commonly in committed relationships.

In fact, gender codes of today are being pushed in a significantly different direction. I Dream of Jeannie, which ran from 1965 to 1970, portrayed a house in which the man was served by a genie that also posed as his wife. Jeannie wore sexy clothing, was perfectly obedient, and yet always seemed to have the upper hand. Today's woman, represented in, for example, How I Met Your Mother, is no less magical, witty, charming, or sexy -- but she is somewhat less idealized. What has been idealized, however, is the sexual nature of today's TV relationships. The lesbians of The L Word, for example, are depicted more as sex objects like Jeannie than as real-life lesbians.

Tina Krauss explores such a suggestion when she notes a distinction in the advertising of the first season of The L Word and the second. The first displayed the female characters in a row, arms around one another, like ordinary women dressed in denim or button-up shirts. Their lesbianism was highlighted by a slightly androgynous look. The billboard that went up to advertise the second season showcased the female characters nude on a rug, their arms and legs strategically placed censoriously over specific parts of the body. The same female characters were now portrayed as much sexier, feminine creatures -- like Jeannie. Krauss observes the same: characters looked less like themselves and more like "runway models." Kraus is led to ask the question: "Are the creators [of The L Word] allowing capitalism to create a lesbian identity that is more pleasing to heteropatriarchy?"

Simply put, is a sexed-up lesbian show good for lesbians, or good for producers who know they can make money by selling advertising on a show that will attract the kind of men who made Wild Things a box office hit? Kraus contends that lesbian identity should receive more focus in the media. The L Word puts lesbians as a group in the spotlight, but represents them poorly. A similar objection is made by Friedan in "From Rosie to Lucy." What we have here is media manipulation of a specific group of people -- both men and women -- designed to do two things: make money off advertising, and promote a specific social program.