TV Show Feminist Hit List



	TV Show Hit List

For Extra Credit on the final exam, you were asked: "If you could get rid of one current film or television show that you feel is working against the principles of feminism, what would it be? In a brief paragraph, explain why." The Swan makeover show was a clear winner with four votes, but dating games ranked high in your minds as anti-feminist. Here are your nominations for the Hit List.

	FOX
The Swan	Official Website
I would elminate the show The Swan becauase it is SICK. This show gives women plastic surgery so that they can become beautiful, and therefore loved, and happy people. This line of thinking is HORRIBLE! It supports so many things feminism tried to kill. I would get rid of those shows like The Swan, which I have not actually seen, but have seen previews for and heard about. It takes women who are not faring well. When it comes to ideals in society of beauty or weight, and maybe sometimes women who have some physical deformities, and then transforms them into some model looking type of woman. I am not sure if they do it to men or not, but I just think the premise is awful in general. It is okay to help people who might have a cleft palate or something, but to also give people tummy tucks and facelifts is unnecessary, especially as a tv show for people to be entertained by. It upholds an ideal that is impossible for most people to get to, as well showing how all you need to be happy is to look like this ideal. In addition, it fails to show how this will help the rest of the population who may want to feel better about themselves too, as if this was the answer anyways. It does not challenge any gender stereotypes or roles, encourages superficiality and more ridiculous tv watching of reality shows, and uses a facade of helping people to continue to promote aesthetic improvements as panaceas for human unhappiness. I would eliminate The Swan, a reality TV show about making "ugly ducklings" into beauty queens via plastic surgery (extensive in nature) and lessons in social interaction. This show enforces the idea that in order to be successful, one must be beautiful; shows that women strive to be the oppressed caged bird, over the natural being. The message this show sends to young girls is that if I'm not good enough, I can have surgery and be made better, when in actuality though they may be more attrative, these women are still likely to be subjected to the same issues as before their operations. Surgery does not fix everything ("Painted birds" are oppressed just like "plain-looking birds"; differently, but stilll oppressed). Although I will not completely bash the brilliant minds at Fox, I think they have definately crossed the line. A new reality tv show entitled The Ugly Duckling (or something along those lines) takes a certain number of women who are considered ugly ducklings, gives them ton and ton of plastic surgery, and transforms them into swans. Throughout the entire process, they are not allowed to see the "transformation." Then, at the end, they all compete against each other to determine who is the prettiest of the pretty. I am really baffled by the entire concept / appeal of this. Essentially this is a twelve step program for every woman in America to follow and transform themselves from ugly ducklings into swans. This is a comlete criticism of diversity. The whole idea of the show is completely based on the traditional notion of perfection / beauty. This show does not even attempt to to convey any type of acceptance or understanding. You are ugly and fat, no one likes you so we are going to turn you into a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSON. I think this show is the most slanderous against the principles of feminism. However this is just one of many like it, which is a terribly sad / frightening thought.
The Family Guy	Official website
I hate to put this particular show because I am sure that most everyone else is as well. However, the TV show The Family Guy has really got to go. Really, it could not be more against the principles of feminism. There is an intelligent, loving, caring and attractive woman who is married to an ignorant, rude, disrespectful disgusting pig of a man. It is almost as if his character was created to be the opposite of feminist. Lois, the wife is constantly basing her life on his decision and actions and mistakes. Just as, in reality, women are pushed around, as needed, by men. He is completely disrespectful and she always takes him back. He lies and manipulates and she is always cleaning up after him, but he is still viewed as the poweful, dominant, male figure. She does everything around the house and raises the kids and is ridiculed rather than respected and appreciated. Then, when she does work, it's merely to make up for his inconsistencies. Ultimately, she is treated like dirt and this is made to seem completely acceptable.
	MTV Official website
How about we go on a grand scale and get rid of an entire network? MTV. MTV serves as a hub for trends and marketing to teenagers. It showcases the latest fashion and music and basically tries to tell everyone what's cool. Where do you think the thong craze began? A video for "The Thong Song" was constantly in rotation during my 11th grade year in high school. And I hate to say it, but I remember thinking, "Well, if guys think that's good looking, I guess I could try it." It didn't help that the boy I was dating at the time loved that song. Teenagers and women even younger are being forcefed images of women in videos, request shows, and general programming featuring other women who are veritable stick figures! How is a girl supposed to grow up and love her body just the way it is when all she sees are women who must constantly diet to achieve their waifish figure? I could go on for pages, but I think I've made it obvious why MTV completely hurts the feminist cause.
Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica	Official Website
If I could get rid of one current tv show it would have to be Newlyweds, the show with Jessica Simpson. She says some of the most assanine things, and she is serious. It's "reality tv" that's the worse part. Well I don't know whose reality that is but it isn't mine or anyone else I know. She acts ditzy, whiney, and is totally dependent on her husband and everyone else to do everything for her. She is definitely giving young twenty-something women a bad name. Lets just hope she is just acting, for her sake!
Dismissed	Official Website
I would take off the show Dismissed. It's on MTV and the premise is One Guy goes on a date with two girls and the girls must fight for the guys affection. It seems wrong on so many levels. First off they are making women compete for a guys approval, which is an unhealthy thing for them to do. Women should be able to be friends and supporters of each other rather than rivals. Second a soman's body is often a way for a woman to get the attention of the man; again we should not be showing women its what you look like that matters. Finally a lot of the time the contestants will at least kiss each other. But are the women comfortable with this and is this what they want or are they doing what they think people (the man) wants them to do. So for multiple reasons I wish this show would get yanked.
	Comedy Central
The Man Show	Official Website
I would take The Man Show off the air as it is a total exploitation of women. Because this show is basically soft portn it encourages men to behave in sexually harmful ways toward women, defames women as persons (girls in bikinis jumping on trampolines) and leads men to think less of women as human beings. Despite the fact these women are free to choose this career, I believe it sends the wrong message to its audience. P.S. I would also take off EVERY Coors Light Commercial. On The Man's Show it starts out with women jumping half clothed on a trampoline. Then throughout the show women are passing out drinks half naked. Men are drinking their beers and making dirty jokes. This show puts each gender in its place at its worst. The men look like jerky pigs and the women look like lifeless Barbies. The whole point of the show is to appeal to a male audience of what they think a male wants in life-beer and sex.
	ABC
The Bachelor	Official website
The tv show I would love never to see again is the Bachelor and even Bachelorette. Could they promote good looks money and fakeness more? NO! It seems to be the modernday tv dating game, but in a reality tv show where we get to see the weekly "fight over the guy" episodes. Women are competing for one man who is allowed to flirt until his heart is content and kiss, feel up, look at in bikinis for a mere 6 weeks only in the end to pick the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with. And he doesn't even go through the appli ations! The producers "pick" the 25 women of whom he will choose. It's a superficial show that tries to "prove" that you can fall in love in a short time and it will last. The only couple that has stayed together since it started was the Bachelorette couple. And even she was rejected in the first Bachelor! WHAT A MESS!
	In syndication
Celebrity Bodies	Trouble TV. A syndicated UK show based on the popular magazine, carried on VH1 and other networks. Official website
If I could get rid of anything current within the media right now, I might completely demolish VH1. It has drastically changed over the past few years, and I feel as if shows such as Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and Celebrity Bodies are really negative shows on television. If I had to pick one it would be Celebrity Bodies, a show that pays homage to the fit celebrities who have the time and the means to look good. This show glorifies celebrity bodies to the point that it makes me sick, and it completely goes against feminist values. It glorifies dieting and plastic surgery-what a GREAT show for our children to be watching. Feminism is about appreciating the body for how it is while being healthy. Celebrity Bodies only makes the viewer feel bad about themselves and never really delves into the factors that allow celebrities to be so fit, i.e. money, time, etc. Also this show focusses completely on the external apperance, while feminism tries to focus on the internal.
ElimiDATE	Dawn Syndicated Productions (Warner Brothers), carried on superstation WGN among others. Official website
I would get rid of Elimidate. I say this because I saw it last night and it literally almost made me ill. The entire concept strikes me as a perverse televised version of prostitution, with scantily clad women fighting over a man, and the man egging them on. I always think that the intelligent woman who doesn't abuse the other girls will win, but she's always the first to go. The show demoralizes women, perpetuates unhealthy body images, glorifies male domination, and might be the most evil thing to ever happen.
That '70s Show	A Carsey-Werner Production, in syndication, Official Website
One show that I would get rid of is That 70's Show on Fox because in each episode it depicts women as playing the stereotypical roles of women. There is nothing radical about any of the women. They are all subordinate to their husbands or boyfriends, and if they do stand up for themselves it is generally mocked afterwards. This show is extremely funny. However I think its feminist background is no where near what it should be in 2004.
	NBC
Friends	Official Website
The television show Friends, although I will admit I am a regular viewer, does not provide very good feminist role models. First the female characters have always held stereotypical women's jobs: chef, waitress, massage therapist, fashion industry. As well, in relationships, they are more often depicted as the ones falling in love, being heartbroken, crying, or leaving irrational phone messages (Rachel to Ross in an early episode, Monica to that older guy more recently). My final, and most drastic complaint, is of Rachel as a mother. The show has never depicted her coming straight home from work to take care of a child all night. How does she look so good when she would be getting up in the middle of the night to a crying baby, being spit up upon and, oh yeah, giving birth after carrying a child for nine months? As well, child care is never discussed-heck, the damn kid isn't even in the show most of the time. If the writers want her to have a baby, they should have been prepared to conquer the issues single mothers face in the real world.
	Radio Network
Steve and D.C.	Official Website
Though not a film or television series, I have identified a program that undoubtedly works against the principles of feminism. Since moving to Meadville last July, I have become an avid listener of the Steve and DC Morning Show, a radio program based in St. Louis that a local station (WUUZ) broadcasts. I listen every weekday morning not because I enjoy the show but because a) poor reception offers me no other options and b) I am strangely captivated by the sheer idiocy of the show's personalities. Aside from having painfully poor taste in movies and a sickening penchant for George W. Bush, Steve and DC-the stars of the show, clearly-are right-wing traditionalists who believe that a woman's job is to cook, clean, and raise children. I can't even begin to elaborate upon the narrow-mindedness of the dialogue that transpires between these two disc jockeys, as it is so consistently terrible! Racy Stacy, the only female on the show (who contributes just as much, but fails to secure recognition in the show's title) is the polar opposite of her male colleagues. Stacy (an unwed mother with a liberal perspective on issues of religion, politics, etc.) is forever being overshadowed and undermined by the obnoxious Steve and DC. I am utterly amazed that this show continues to grace the airwaves (and disgusted with myself for continuing to listen!)

http://merlin.allegheny.edu/employee/a/acarr/ws/tvhitlist.html

Last updated 4 May 2004

Contact Professor Carr at amelia.carr@allegheny.edu