Media today gives us gender stereotypes. From movies to television to even music videos, the entertainment industry gives people the image that males are more dominate over females by showing females as the foremost parental figure, homemakers, and sex objects. However, ABC’s new hit show Desperate Housewives quickly made a dent in American pop culture not for these gender stereotypes, but the truth behind the most dominant female stereotype of housewives. 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 40 s 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 while her husband works and has control of her. Their main roles follow the gender descriptions that the public is used to. However, once you get past the image, it is another story. Past the closed door, after normal hours, there is a life that these women have that no one else knows about. This makes this show different than the others out there that put down the female figure, by doing it in a different way of showing their problems more than just making them a powerless figure.
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Today, people realize and see that there is not the same consensus of family dynamics and lifestyles that the 1950's demonstrated when "the family life and gender roles became much more predictable" (Coontz 36). An analysis of Stephanie Coontz's, What We Really Miss About the 1950's, along with the episodes of Leave It To Beaver, have revealed certain roles and structure of a quintessential family ...
Instead of showing all the women as June Cleaver clones, they show the reality of the stress housewives go through trying to keep their image intact. Susan is just desperate for love, and is a big klutz when it comes to it, the leading cause for all her mistakes. Gabrielle, while having the life of her dreams, is having an affair with the 17 year-old that mows her lawn and most recently is trying to find ways to keep her mother-in-law from telling her husband. Bree’s perfectionism is the cause of all her problems. She tries her best to keep her perfect image of the perfect family up, but it is what is driving her husband away. She’s such a perfectionist that she doesn’t want anyone to know that they are in marriage counseling.
Lynette has become so overwhelmed with the stress of caring for her four kids that she’s become addicted to their ADD medication. She has realized her addiction and has a breakdown when she tries to relax, but her children never give her the chance. After she gets a chance to get away, the other women go looking for her, and in a short scene, Lynette tells them that she is a failure which causes the rest of them to admit their problems. Lynette says that she wishes she would have known that and they all agree that everyone has problems in their private lives and starting then they are going to share them with each other in a way to get help. And finally, there is the narrator of the show, Mary Alice Young (Brenda Strong), who committed suicide early in the first episode because someone had some blackmail on her and something that she had done. While only looking at the stories within this drama, it doesn’t reinforce gender stereotypes.
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Trapped Without and Within The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, tells the story of a woman trapped in her own life. Set in the 1800 s, a time when women and men s roles were strictly defined by society, the woman reveals her true to desire to break free from the confines of her marriage and her life. All the while, she experiences an extreme sense of guilt and shame for her negative ...
However, watching it is another story. Only in TV land would 40 year-old housewives look this good. With the whole idea of the show, you would think that these women would look more like average women, but they don’t. With their perfect skin, hair and figures, they are the ones that depict the secret lives of housewives in suburbia. And of course, how could there not be a slut represented in the group? In every show and movie there is always that woman that’s been around the block.
In this one it is Evie (Nicolette Sheridan) that has been married several times (she’s currently between husbands) and has been mentioned as the neighborhood slut. Susan, the klutz that she is, happens to get locked outside of her house naked and discovered by her cute neighbor that she has a crush on. This show helps us understand the social construction of gender by showing the inside lives of housewives. Men believe that that is where women belong, in the home, but working to keep a house in tip top shape, taking care of the children, cooking dinner every night and so forth can be just as much work and stress as an actual job and this show proves that.
It shows how desperate these women are to get away from the perfect housewife image that everyone else has of them, which is the reality of many women’s lives. Since this show has debuted, more and more real life desperate housewives have come out on talk shows and so forth explaining the reality of the problems that these characters on this show go through. This isn’t just Hollywood talking, but real life for some women.
