Gender Stereotypes In Friends

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The television media has the power to reify simplistic stereotypes of behavior through the use of culturist language. The series Friends attributes individual behavior to constraining cultural groups, thereby strengthening default thinking of culture and what is and is not ‘normal’. In repeatedly portraying stereotypical behaviour of sexuality and gender on-screen through the main characters, Friends works to simplify these behaviours as a homogenous cultural factor as opposed to individual (Holliday, Hyde, & Kullman, 2010). The language used in the series Friends deploys discourses about masculinity, femininity and the LGBTQ community to the viewer that creates a preferred, more simple reading of culture, essentialist, and removes individualism. …show more content…
Monica, Phoebe, and Rachel of Friends have been prescribed to typically feminine careers of a chef, a masseuse, and a waitress, respectively, and thought patterns that are associated with their gender and not individuality, depicted as “non-professionals, homemakers, wives or parents, and sexual gatekeepers,” (Collins, 2011). As well as working in a kitchen as a chef, a female stereotype, Monica is also shown as jealous of not having a child yet (Crane, Greenstein, Kauffman, Strauss, & Burrows, 1995), the language hinting toward the essentialist idea that women should want to have children, a homogenous value that is stereotyped to the female culture. The characters also essentialise their own female identities, such as “We can drive, we can work, we can vote, what more do these broads want?” (Cohen, Goldberg-Meehan, Reich, & Epps, 2003) reinforcing that idea that women have a defined set of rules and behaviours specific to their gender and consequently, is what defines the female culture. In portraying the women of the Friends series in gendered careers and roles, the television series has induced traditional sexist ideas, which are reflective of an essentialist view of women belonging to one homogenous culture with prescribed rules and values on the basis of their gender (Holliday, Hyde, & Kullman, …show more content…
As well as the misgendering of characters in the Friends television series, there is reductive language used towards those of the LGBTQ community and so, negative stereotypes are deployed. When Monica comments, “So how goes the dancing? Gay yet?” (Cohen, Reich, & Mancuso, 1997) there is an assumption created that if a man dances, he must be homosexual. Similarly, Ross associates the career of being a nanny to femininity, therefore when confronted with a male nanny, assumes that he has to be homosexual or “…gotta be at least bi,” (Crane, Kauffman, & Bright, 2002). Transgender or transsexual characters in popular culture can be found to be “exaggeratingly stereotypical, or associated with criminality or deviance,” (Kanter, 2012) such the frequent misgendering of Chandler’s father and comments such as “no one is going to be looking at the bride with the father of the groom is wearing a backless dress,” (Buckner, Jones, Malins, Bright, & Halvorson, 2001). Culturist language featured in Friends plays on existing exaggerated stereotypes of those who identify as LGBTQ and further works to reduce on-screen behavior to be universal of the entire culture rather than acknowledging individualism. Representations in media are kept generic to appeal to the wider audience (Kanter, 2012) and influence how social
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