As good as Friends was it still portrayed its wonderful characters as gender stereotypes, as most sit-coms do, of course, but they very cleverly split these steroetypical traits and spread them across the six main characters.
The girls: a cook, a compulsive cleaner, essentially the housewife (Monica), an avid shopper, emotional, (Rachel), the ditzy, promiscuous blonde (Phoebe).
The boys: a misogynistic, chauvinist who is somewhat lazy (Joey), the funny one, who uses humour as a shield (Chandler) and a nerd with a love for science (Ross). Plus the objectification of women.
Do these stereotypes make up the ultimate stereotype for each gender? Is there anything that's been missed out? Is this, quite possibly, a load of rubbish? And has the variety of stereotypes been replicated in any other shows?
I think there definitely is a lot to say about gender and how its portrayed in friends. On top of how heteronormative the show is. Part of it most likely is a product of the times. The show began airing in 1994, and things were definitely very different. I think it would be interesting to compare it to Will and Grace to a certain extent. While Will and Grace still has problems, it came out when Friends was in the middle of its 10 year run, and was handling Gender much differently. Both were vary successful. I think we can see these stereotypes played out in many sitcoms. – Talcon9 years ago
Can we get an example of mysogyny on friend. I think that word is so overused and its meaning is changing with is usage. I don't think that I saw any hatred or dislike of women in friends, though their definitely wad some objectification. I do think that their were definitely sterotypival gender roles in friends but misogyny, no. Even objectification through sexualization is debatable, as the idea of objectification changed to state that men who are able to gaze at a woman only sexually at first glance but then be able to relate to her as a person, this omits the idea of objectification as their ideas of the person are not completely based on her looks. – fchery9 years ago
Fchery, that's a fair point and my mistake. You are right the word's meaning has become confusing and, as you said, overused. But that could be taken as part of the topic. How in some ways the stereotypes are enforced and how certain stigmas in the show are misplaced. – Jamie9 years ago