I have been a big fan of The Office for several years now and although I did realize that many of the shows embodied many different stereotypes, I had never really noticed how many of the episodes were sending messages about gender. This week I watched the episode called “Women’s Appreciation Day” and as you can probably already tell from the title, the show was full messages on feminism. The show started out with Phyllis telling everyone that she had just been flashed in the parking lot. When Michael heard, he just laughed and made fun of it. He even asked why the flasher did not choose to do it to Pam or Karen (the younger women in the office) instead. The attitude Michael showed towards the incident displays the common view of society that women are sex symbols. The act was demeaning for Phyllis and the guys did not care how it had affected her. They saw it as a humorous situation. Dwight however, perceived the event in a whole different manner. He sent out a memo to all of the women that said they would be sent home if they broke any of the following rules: no makeup or heals over 1inch allowed, sleeves must be down to wrist, shirts must be buttoned up to the collar and must be muted colors, and no woman is allowed to talk to strangers without written authorization by Dwight himself. The memo symbolized Dwight’s belief that men are superior to women. He thought it was okay to deny women their rights to do what they please, and that they must have his permission to do anything. Later Michael called an emergency women’s appreciation meeting. He started it off by telling everyone that movies and magazines portray women as skinny and tall goddesses. He then asked if this was true and followed it up with the response “NO... look around!” The idea that women are judged by their appearances is brought up. Michael did not mention anything about how men are also portrayed in the media in the same sense. He only wanted to point out that the women of the office are not perfect, and his way of saying it was very negative towards women. Karen then told him that he was being misogynist and he took it as a complement. In the final scene of the episode, Michael was doing a personal interview and say that “any man who says they understand women is a lie because they are un-understandable”. He also finishes up with the question explaining how to be apprecative towards women. His response was because they can try to be “illogical, flighty, unpredictable, and emotion; and then maybe they will have learned something from women after all”.