The Office- "Boys and Girls"

This week I was watching a previous season of The Office and found one episode in particular that referred to the topic of gender roles. The episodes title was Boys and Girls. Jane, the corporate boss, came into the office to give a lecture on “women in the workplace”. All of the female employees were required to attend. Jane discussed how men are assertive and how females should dress. In this scene, men are implied to be mean, aggressive people and the only way for women to be respected in their eyes are to dress revealing. Later in the meeting they talk about their dreams. The dreams are suppose to be business related but all of the ladies talked about how they wanted to get married, what they wanted their houses to look like, and how many kids they wanted to have. The writers of the episode were implying that the only thing women want out of life is a family. None of the women ever said anything about being promoted or finding a better job. It was all about the dreams they have of getting a fairy tale life.
While the women are in their meeting, the men decide to create their own conference. Michael told all the men that their meeting will be in the shipping warehouse that is full of sweat and guts because it is where the “real men” work. He is implying that in order to be considered a real man, physical pain and sweat are needed. The men in the warehouse are not the men who sit around and drink coffee at work. These are the men who move heavy boxes around all day. In Michael’s eyes, that makes them “real men”.

LOST

During the season premiere of LOST, I noticed one scene included indirect stereotypes of males and females. The scene took place on the island where Rose and her husband Bernard were trying to start a fire. They did not have any lighters or matches, all they had were sticks. Bernard repeatedly tried to start the fire by rubbing two small sticks together. Even though they both had been delegated to start the fire, Rose only sat there watching Bernard. She then began yelling at him for not doing it right. She never once tried to light it herself. Bernard then began yelling back at her saying that he knew exactly what he was doing. After several minutes went by, Bernard finally got a spark and tries to blow on it to get it going. It quickly went out and Rose began yelling at him again. One stereotype that I noticed was that females only nag and complain without even trying to solve the problem. Rose never once tried to help because she was too busy yelling at her husband telling him what he did wrong. Another stereotype was that males think they are doing everything right; even if they have no idea how to do it. Bernard could have easily asked another person on the island for help, but instead he consistently said he could do it. He never did get the fire to start!