Gender Representation In Gilmore Girls

Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games may not be perfect, but one thing she succeeds in doing is breaking many gender stereotypes. Women in media, such as movies, are hyperseaxualized and are not a real representation of real women. Whether it be women still having traditional roles or them having unrealistic body types, women are not properly represented in the media. In four diverse studies on gender and children’s entertainment done by Dr. Stacy L. Smith and Crystal Allene Cook they prove the need for more males in movie and television entertainment aimed at children.

Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator of Gilmore Girls, essentially wrote the show about nothing. After not having a job for years, Sherman had writer’s block. On television, everything she saw seemed the same, identical characters and paralleling plots, she desired to create something different. Once, she had visited the small town of Washington, Connecticut and loved the “everyone knows everything” idea. So she thought, “Why not make a show about it?” After tweaks by the production company, Gilmore Girls was born. Although it is a show about a single mom, by nitpicking through character’s witty banter, one can see the philosophical aspects of the show. One of Sherman’s main goals was to create no analogous characters. In this attempt, she

Today, more children are somehow connected to the media. Having computers, television, and phones, there always is a way to access it. The media being this accessible can cause problems, because in almost every show that airs on television has some type of gender bias. From how they portray a character from it’s behavior, role or appearance. This has set bad examples for children watching since the children copy what they see on TV. The cartoons, Charlie Brown, Phineas and Ferb, and SpongeBob SquarePants all have a gender bias. Each cartoon is aired on televisions at different times, so it show’s how throughout time gender bias is still an issue.

The Netflix documentary Miss Representation by Jennifer Siebel Newsom explores how the media contributes to influence the young girls and boys in America. Every day in America we are showed this unrealistic look of what the so-called perfect image of women is supposed to be from the TV shows we watch, the movies we see, to the magazines we read, to the online social media outlets we visit. This documentary shows the negative effects it's having on teenage boys and girls in America, Miss Representation interweaves between the stories of teenage girls, telling their own experiences and how the media has portrayed the image of women to them. They share their stories from pressures they feel they have to live up too from how the media shows them

Our society seems to have a lot of very stereotypical misconceptions about boys and girls and the role they are expected to play. Media has a pivotal role to play in this front concerning the idea of defining and framing gender. Media consumers transform the messages in that and make demeanors with

In Miss Representation, many female actresses, news anchors, politicians, directors and producers talk about how females suffer a lot of social, political and economic inequalities in today’s society. There are double standards against women in magazines, on TV, in movies, the news, politics, and the workplace. The media is an influential part of modern culture. When women are portrayed as objects for men to use -- never as the protagonist or president -- and when female news anchors are objectified, this will cause girls of all ages to begin viewing themselves as objects. Girls grow up in a world where their voice does not count; where our culture does not embrace them in all of their diversities, where

The documentary “Miss Representation” delves into how the media and society. The viewer is exposed to how the media builds an expectation of how women should look and act. When the media portrays women as the perfect weight, height, and behavior for the target audience, it lowers the self-esteem of the females watching that cannot hope to compare to a fictional character. Men exposed to these types of advertisement and entertainment are taught to objectify women. It distorts societies and male expectations of how real women should look and behave. The documentary also discusses the lack of female protagonists in television and movies. There is a distinct lack of female heroines in our world today. This shortage further diminishes the hopes

The media, particularly the film industry, has been both confirming and challenging social constructs since its beginnings and has the capability to influence its point-of-view its viewers in ways that other sources of media simply cannot. After all, many of us remember during our childhood re-enacting our favorite scenes from our favorite movies with our friends. While many may not give this a second thought, some of the movie characters we strive to be like behave in a way that is misogynistic, violent, or disreputable. Furthermore, some films produced are confirming conservative gender ideologies which can also be dangerous because the viewer may then believe that adhering to these ideologies is acceptable and rebelling against it may prove

Gender representations in television bear immense weight within society as they either: reproduce or critique societal values, address injustice or uphold mainstream beliefs, and perpetuate stereotypes or initiate change. Today, the problem with gender representations in the television medium is not a lack of visibility of women, as multiple genres include women characters, but rather the problem lies in the portrayal of women. Are the images of women displayed in a positive manner? Does the television medium accurately represent women? Although questions of accuracy and positivity in representations seem minor, these questions have major implications as people use television shows as windows for broader cultural practices. We must realize that the people we see on television programs

Society is accustomed to having men play the role as “breadwinners,” while women stay at home, cook, clean, and raise the children. Mad Men portrayed men with high office jobs, while females had the lower end jobs. Nannies and secretaries were played as women in the show, which is a stereotypical job for a female. One of the women in Mad Men, Betty, was going to do the dishes, but her husband told her to “leave the dishes for the girl.” This represents the role of females taking care of the household.

Gilmore Girls is a quirky TV show about single mother Lorelai Gilmore and her daughter Rory. Viewers are shown Lorelai and Rory going through their everyday lives in a small town called Stars Hollow. Lorelai wants the best for her daughter so when Rory gets to opportunity to go to a private high school, Lorelai does everything in her power to give Rory the change to go, even if it means that Lorelai has to reconcile with her parents. Lorelai dreams of running an inn and Rory dreams of attending Harvard, so the show is centered on these two plots. The show also has subplots of romance, comedy, and family drama. This isn't the type of show that I would normally watch, but since the show includes a lot of comedy I gave it a chance and it became

Although modern media has made great strides in terms of female representation, we still have a long way to go. While women show up more often in movies, literature, and the like, their portrayals are steeped in the stereotyped idea that “sex sells”. As a result, the female characters, whatever their capabilities or likability, are undermined by the ridiculous standards given to them.

The project this paper will be focusing on is the examining the media with an adolescent and adult focus. For this I decided to look at a movie and determine the extent to which the portrayals of women and men were stereotypical or progressive. Given the time of year it is, the movie being examined is the horror movie “Cabin in the Woods”. In this movie there are two female main characters and three males. There are also two male sub-characters.

Gilmore Girls follows the lives of three women in the Gilmore family. Rory, the youngest, is a teenager at the beginning of the show. She is an only child and was raised by her single mother, Lorelai, in the small town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut. Lorelai is in her thirties throughout the show. She became pregnant with Rory when she was sixteen, and left her wealthy parents’ home to raise Rory alone. Emily, the

“Gender is the crucial factor in characterization in the majority of sitcoms. Up until the impact of feminism in the 1970s, in the UK at least, it is clear that most of the successful sitcoms featured leading male characters (Hancock, Steptoe, Dad’s Army, Till Death Do Us Part, Porridge etc.). Women were more likely to feature in ‘ensemble casts’ – The Rag Trade, Are You Being Served? This was also a function of the employment opportunities for women. Since the 1970s, women in leading roles have been more common (but the most successful comedies have tended to be based on couples rather than single women).” (Roy Stafford, TV Sitcoms and Gender, ONLINE)