Ways the TV series 'Friends' was anti-feminist

I've not read the whole thread, but I would challenge that the characters' career choices are hugely sexist. OK, Phoebe and Rachel perhaps. But, as others have pointed out, being a chef is either male or gender neutral, at least. Chandler started out in IT procurement and moved into advertising. Procurement and advertising aren't overwhelmingly male by any means. Joey was an actor. I won't challenge the assertion that 2 out of 3 acting jobs are male (I suppose there are lots of war and police films, and people running about being Orcs), but Joey's only good acting job was on a soap opera. I don't think most people would regard that as a stereotypically male career. Ross is a science academic, but it is shown that he works with female staff.

And he always came across as a good Dad to Ben.

I think if you look for anything hard enough in a TVshow you're going to find it. In fact, I'm sure just as many points could be raised that Friends was a feminist show. Now I'm not saying it was at all, just that posters are looking for something in particular.

In particular I don't understand people's complaints about Monica prioritising her husband over her new job....Surely you would expect to be ahead of your partner's job in their priorities? :/

But, who on the thread said all television should have a progressive bias? We're just having fun discussing it....

I think it was waaay less heteronormative than sex and the city.

It had a happy gay marriage in it.

In the 90s.

In america!

I htink that expecting it to be liberal progressive non-conformist friends about absolutly everything that ever happens in day-to-day life is a bit ott no? Why should it be? Why should all television have a progressive bias?

Ethelb, hmmm in a way a lot of it was poking fun at patriarchal stuff but at the same time perpetuating it.

One of the main themes was how the men were made fun of whenever they did something "girly". Even the women joined in with their "grow a pair" comments. It showed the boys as being more complex than mere bloke stereotypes but at the same time kept within a firm patriarchal "girly is bad" narrative.

Ok I admit. I watched it waaaayyy too much!

Yes,that was 'the one with the unfulfilled heteronormative expectations' episode.

I thought the stuff to do with the Monica/Chandler marriage was more to do with poking fun at heteronormative expectations and how they struggled to fit in with some of them.

I kept laughing when I was watching Friends (particularly 'the one with Joey's new brain') so it must have been funny,mustn't it?

Light entertainment is a real life situation. It comes out of real life, and its in real life, and its a part of society that we should explore and engage with and discuss. That doesn't stop anyone else from just watching and laughing without thinking, though.

"I understand why analysis of real life situations is necessary, light entertainment is just that."

But entertainment, unless it is meant to be satirical and undermining to the status quo (and god knows Friends wasn't that!), reflects the society we live in. If feminists dislike the way society is and want it to change, they have to question anything that unquestioningly and approvingly portrays the aspects of society they object to. And being 'funny' (and I debate whether Friends was funny anyway) doesn't justify it.

I think more top chefs are male than female - women seem to be 'cooks' (Nigella, Rachel Khoo, Lorraine Pascale) who like to bake and feed their families, whilst the cheffier types (Jamie, Gordon Ramsay, Heston) are blokes.

Monica cooking for a living could be read as a good role model, but I think it's problematized by the fact that it also ties in with her past obesity, and her obsessive desire to feed and to host. And as she says to reassure Chandler, 'just so you know, it goes 'you' [up here in importance], 'job' [down there in importance]'.

I don't think it's still the case that 'most top chefs are male'.There's a Bistro near us and it's a woman who does the cooking!

I do think an awful lot of the childish/sexist stuff was poking fun at it though. Like a less extreme version of 'Men Behaving Badly' which had the clue in the title!
I think it was a mixed bag - good and bad influences really.
Some of your points like Monica - cooking as a career don't really work as most top chefs are in fact male and it is a good role model to see a woman in this position! A few other points are slightly dodgy too...but I think you may be half-right!

Yeah I loved the poker game episode too. There were so many things about Friends that was good, feminist even, but then so many pernicious status quo stereotypes...

I think that's how it happens, mix it all up and it makes it harder to deconstruct.

Has anyone seen "Happy Endings" BTW? That's really funny, a bit like Friends. It has an element of sexual stereotyping but then the characters are far more complex than in Friends and the female characters at least get their share of the funny lines.

Gosh, I will look at friends in a different way now. Although I love the show. I think the buying the baby off the single mum thing has a moralistic message and is indicative that life is much harder for a single mum in the USA than in the UK.

Oh, happy anniversary, thread!

The poker game episode was brilliant!

I remember reading an article about the scriptwriting team became more male-dominated and traditional in their outlook as time went on, which would explain the change in their attitudes.

At the beginning it took quite a feminist/modern approach to Monica and Rachel's sex lives (eg. fighting over condoms in the loo, Monica sleeping with Paul the Wine Guy) but then reverted back into the typical sexist tropes (normalization of porn, chandler being an emotional illiterate).

Sometimes I feel like the scriptwriters had a copy of "Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus" at their table as they used all the annoying stereotypes promoted by that shitty book.

Ooooh the bit that annoyed me the most was when they had the poker game. Rachel was portrayed as a right princess whilst Ross was the poor lovelorn self-sacrificing hero that "let" her think she'd won and prance about like a diva. Vomit...

Haven't seen the Marking Place episode. (?)

Marking place

The football game was FANTASTIC!

I loved Susan, she had the measure of whiny, controlling Ross from the beginning.

However my greatest love was Janice. Far too good for Chandler IMO.

Steve, I feel you may have a point, perhaps you'd like to elaborate? We can help you with the longer words (like 'wheelbarrow')

Coherent argument there Steve.