Since writing our masculinity paper, whenever I watch a TV show I find myself instantly thinking about the gender roles of the male characters. One of the best examples I've found has been the show Suburgatory on ABC.
The main teen character, Tessa, starts dating a guy named Ryan Shay. He is popular, attractive, and it is made very clear his good looks make up for his intelligence.
The first scene of the episode "Body Talk" shows them eating lunch in the cafeteria at school. Ryan is munching away on a full stack of ribs, and Dallas is asking about his schedule. Every day he has something new. Wrestling on Wednesday, modeling and jump rope club on Thursday, Boy Band practice Friday night. Dallas comments that he has a "full plate," and he replies "yeah, I need 30 grams of animal protein at every meal."
Because she is now dating the most popular, attractive guy in school, she feels "in danger of being pathetic" because she has no after school activities.
She becomes producer of the school's TV show, Teen Talk. When their usual host calls out, she is forced to come up with a plan and replacement. Ryan shows up, and he is the perfect fill in.
"What are you going to talk about? You need a funny anecdote to start the show!" Tessa exclaims. "Babe, its fine, I'm going to talk about my body." Sure enough, he opens the show asking for questions and compliments, and the phone lines ring off the hook.
Later in the show, Tessa gets fed up with the fact that she is producing a show about her boyfriends body. Specifically after he answers a question of, "How does your body do in the heat?" Ryan replies "The key to hydration, is hydration. I get hydrated by drinking things, through my mouth." Tessa screams that she wants her name off the show and she could easily create better content. She fires Ryan in front of the rest of the staff (who are three other nerd-type boys who very clearly look up to Ryan) this shows a hit to his masculinity. He yells "Come on boys" to the guys, but they do not follow.
He's being objectified like women are objectified countless times. Maybe it's because the lead is a woman? I was just thinking of Sabrina the Teenage Witch...wasn't her boyfriend kind of dumb too? I never really watched the show so I don't know if he was the most popular/attractive guy in school, though.
ReplyDeleteWhy is she dating him?
I think it's hilarious how people are still portrayed by certain stereotypes even today. Women are objectified, men are objectified but in a different way. Women are made to look stupid, men are made to look stupid.
ReplyDeleteIt interesting though that when women and men are put into the same stereotype in the media, the men always have something to make up for it When women are objectified, they are there as an object to man's pleasure. When a man is objectified he is often made to look bigger and possibly more imposing. When women are made stupid, they're just hot, that's it. When men are objectified, they're often good looking, but also extremely strong and also have another quality that brings him up above the rest.