Sitcoms and Second Wave Feminism

The difference between the sitcoms in the 1960’s and the 1970’s is very evident in regards to the roles of women and their roles. In the 1960’s all of the roles for women were as someone’s wife or as someone’s mother, but in the 70’s women got to be much more: super heroes, cops and working women. This was heavily impacted by second wave feminism and the equality movements of the 60’s. These movements defined and were defined by the media of the time period. As the media started portraying more women working outside the home it became the norm. My grandma immigrated from Ireland in the 1940’s and worked until she got married and had kids, my mom grew up in the 70’s expecting to go to college and work, and she didn’t stop working when my brother and I were born. This shows the stark difference between just two generations. My grandmother quit her job to be a mother, but my mom worked through my childhood as a means of not being bored while my brother and I were at school.

The first exposure I ever had to “The Donna Reed Show” was when I was watching “Gilmore Girls”. “Gilmore Girls,” is a show about a single mother and her daughter and their daily antics, both of them are independent, smart women who had the basis of “The Donna Reed Show.” They play the show on mute and make fun of it, as one of their favorite activities, but in one episode Rory’s boyfriend, Dean, asks why they always make fun of it. They explain the sexism of the plotline and how stupid it is that Donna Reed pretends to enjoy dressing up in her best clothes to do house work. Rory and Dean argue for the whole episode because Dean thinks the idea of having a housewife is appealing, while Rory thinks it’s degrading. At the end of the episode, to make up for their argument, Rory dresses up as Donna Reed and cooks her boyfriend dinner, which ends up being a disaster. He realizes that he wouldn’t want Rory to change because he loves her for her drive and her ambitious nature. I think this shows the difference in TV that I grew up with versus the TV that my mom and grandma grew up with. In the TV that I loved as a kid, the girl I aspired to be was an ambitious young girl who had dreams of going to Harvard. The TV that my grandma had was Donna Reed, the perfect housewife, and the TV my mom grew up with were shows like “Charlie’s Angels,” where the women were working women but impossibly beautiful and referred to as “little girls” in the intro. I think that the people portrayed in TV impact society and the way people grow up a lot and I think that as society evolves, TV evolves and vice versa.