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”.