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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Ways the TV series 'Friends' was anti-feminist

330 replies

darleneoconnor · 07/05/2011 12:23

comes from another thread

-There are lots of references to porn, which totally normalises it

  • The women are unhealthily skinny
  • The 'fat Monica' running joke
  • Joey's womanising
  • Phoebe being used as a womb for hire
  • Monica was riddiculed for dating someone 7 years younger than her but it was ok for Ross to date someone 10 years younger then him
  • All the girls' desire to get married (especially Monica's bridzillaness), as opposed to the boys
  • the anti-single mother rant Monica had at her wedding
  • Rachel's birth was very medicalised and disempowering (but in context of USA healthcare system I suppose)
  • Chandler having to be 'taught' how to have a relationship
  • Monicas getting slagged off for having 'lots' of lovers
  • In the episode where Rachel, Phoebe and Joey make an issue of earning less than the others no-one mentions the gender split
  • They do quite gender-specific jobs, Monica/cooking, Joey/acting (which is 2/3 male), Ross/Paleontologist, Phoebe/massuese, Rachel/waitress/fashion buyer, Chandler/IT(?)
  • they get a stripper for a stag do then glamourise it by her saying how well she is paid
  • Ross's homophobia and his lack of equal parenting of his child
  • Monica's obsession with cleaning
  • the rich Monica and Chandler adopting the babies of someone too poor to keep them herself
  • Chandler pretending to watch tv so he doesn't have to do his fair share of the thanksgiving cooking
  • The football game where Rachel is a 'useless' girl, Phoebe flashes her breasts to win a point and Monica is ridiculed for being as competitive as the boys

I'm sure there's more...

OP posts:
ShowOfHands · 07/05/2011 13:33

She's Chloe, the Xerox girl but Chandler and Joey call her the hot girl from the photocopy place.

I'm not doing my On A Break rant today. I'm too tired.

BitOfFun · 07/05/2011 13:34
Sad
ShowOfHands · 07/05/2011 13:34

Monica didn't change her name though did she. And she didn't tell Chandler she hadn't. Phoebe brought it up in the whole Princess Consuela Banana Hammock/Crap Bag episode.

hocuspontas · 07/05/2011 13:34

Agree - in the end. At the time it seemed she just didn't want to be sidelined.

darleneoconnor · 07/05/2011 13:35

just ecause it was funny doesn't mean it wasn't sexist

OP posts:
ShowOfHands · 07/05/2011 13:35

I've already done a Ross rant today on another thread. It's over there

JoanofArgos · 07/05/2011 13:39

I would take issue a bit with the idea of Ross as bad dad to Ben.... he gets booted out when he's impregnated Carol, and then the two of them relentlessly mock, deride and sideline him. It is just cruel of Susan to say when the baby's still in utero that he will have her surname, and for them not to consult him on names (although his choice is ultimately the one that wins, isn't it?). I know that's because they're painted as a bit nastier than normal women cos they're lesbians, but Ross does get a bad deal over Ben.

BalloonSlayer · 07/05/2011 13:43

I see the point about Ross's homophobia re Carole and Susan has been brought up by other posters, so I won't mention that.

Friends was mainly watched by women so I am presuming women were their target audience.

What would the female target audience have made of three women with high-powered jobs I wonder? Presumably the jobs were "picked" for the female characters so that female viewers would like them more, because they would not feel inferior to them.

Another factor would be that if all six characters had high powered office jobs every single episode would have to take place in the evening. So they were given jobs which meant they could be conveniently available at all times of the day as plot dictated (Chandler excepted).

swiperstopswiping · 07/05/2011 13:44

Oh yes, she was called Chloe.

BitOfFun · 07/05/2011 13:45

I've just read your rant on the other thread. For some reason, I can't c&p on this ipad, but I think the post is highly pertinent to this thread. You are absolutely spot on.

JoanofArgos · 07/05/2011 13:49

The idea that a female audience is perceived not to be able to cope with a show in which three women have high-powered (or just not service-based/feminine) sort of tells you everything you need to to know.

darleneoconnor · 07/05/2011 13:50

All the mothers are badly portrayed which is anti-feminist.
eg

Phoebe's birth Mum abandons her (for no apparent reason)
Her adoptive Mum then kills herself (subtext= all Mums are bad abandoners, no mention of why she killed herself)
Monica and Ross's mum is toxic, constantly mocking M and favouring R
Rachel's Mum is superficial- she went 'straight from her father's house to the sororiety house to Rachel's father's house', never has a life of her own
Joey's Mum puts up with her husband's affair and even says it makes him a better husband! WTF!
Chandler's Mum is a 'strong career women' so has to fir that stereotype by being a 'bad' Mum, by having numerous boyfriends after her husband turned out to be gay (compare to Ross)

OP posts:
nikki1978 · 07/05/2011 13:51

Blimey do you lot find any enjoyment in life or do you tear every little thing to shreds desperately hoping to find something to be 'offended' by Hmm

I liked Friends and still do. It was funny.

JoanofArgos · 07/05/2011 13:52

Is this a good time for a Biscuit?

ShowOfHands · 07/05/2011 13:55

You want to be careful with that ipad. Shiney'll use it as a frisbee.

ShowOfHands · 07/05/2011 13:56

nikki I like Friends. I think you'll find darlene does too (she started this thread). It's just a look back at a zeitgeist with the benefit of hindsight.

darleneoconnor · 07/05/2011 14:06

Joan- they do make susan quite mean. She is the 'baddie' of the piece. (undertone of 'all lesbians are mean'). Can you imagine a black person being stereotyped like that? No.

On the job front, they do mostly have 9-5+ jobs. Rachel is in an office- what hours do fashion buyers do? As an academic, Ross would probably be in uni 9-5 plus doing a lot of extra hours, esp as he gets a PhD behind the scenes. Chefs have to be in earlt to get deliveries and to pre-prepare food for the day so Monica would normally be working from at least lunchtime to the late evening 5/6 days a week. Joey would have free time when he's 'resting but when he's Dr Drake he would be putting in 18 hour days. Phoebe's salon would probably be open 9-5 with some late evenings and weekends.

And then there's the 'they could never afford that appartment on those wages' but that's not really a feminist issue.

OP posts:
darleneoconnor · 07/05/2011 14:11

Show's other thread piece, which inspired this thread:

"Why is Ross creepy? I warn I do run on about this... I'll try to keep it brief.

He is in love with the same woman for 9yrs before he does anything about it. He can at first be seen as just infatuated, it's even quite sweet. But he's at times angry, jealous, controlling, manipulative etc. All behind a veneer of vulnerability and big gestures. Of course he then gets into a relationship with this woman. He is pretty full on pretty quickly and starts to change. Rude about her job, clingy, controlling, starts becoming paranoid and jealous, turns up at her place of work and makes scenes, deliberately tags along on a work trip and embarrasses her all because of the perceived threat of 'Mark'. The Mark thing escalates, she finally snaps and they agree to a break. They quickly decide that this is the wrong thing and are making pains to sort things out (over the phone) but of course Mark is there, Ross assumes the worst and sleeps with the Xerox girl. From this point onwards, he changes into something I really don't like.

He runs around trying to conceal the fact he slept with another woman. When found out he says he only did it because he thought Rachel was doing the same (it's her fault he had sex with another woman), he is accusatory, refuses to accept responsibility. He goes on in subsequent episodes to tell Carol that the relationship between him and Rachel broke down because she was sleeping with Mark (all her fault again and blatant lies), he continues to refuse to accept responsibility and when Rachel finally tries to move on and explains how important it is to her that he admits what he did (18 PAGES FRONT AND BACK!!!), he falls asleep, lies, sleeps with her again anyway, then throws it all back in her face.

It continues right to the end. He dates Mona, lies to her, lets her down, changes the locks to keep her out, gives mixed messages, humiliates her etc. He develops a hilarious rage issue where he screams in the face of the woman he's telling the lake Tipidabo story to, screams at another woman about her lighting (the one with his white teeth), invites a woman who is vulnerable to his apartment and humiliates her, calls her his girlfriend, mocks her and then sends her away. All the time continuing his controlling attitude towards Rachel by not giving her phone messages, keeping stuff from her, interfering with her work plans yet again by bribing her boss.

He's given these sweet big gestures and shown as needy and vulnerable but really he's controlling and awful. They got it really wrong towards the end."

OP posts:
BitOfFun · 07/05/2011 14:15

Excellent- thanks Smile

Great point about the jobs- I can't see when they would ever have time to meet up if it were real.

swiperstopswiping · 07/05/2011 14:16

Everyone I know in RL has always thought Ross is a controlling weirdo though, I've never met anyone who likes him or doesn't think he's a nob.

BitterAndTwistedChoreDodger · 07/05/2011 14:16

I thought the apartment was rent controlled because Monica's deceased grandmother had it and they pretended that she still lived there.

I loved friends but agree that Ross was vile, emotionally immature. Actually all the male characters acted like teenagers.

differentnameforthis · 07/05/2011 14:20

Also there was the one where Monica was going to use a sperm bank and become a single mother but they all talked her out of it. She missed her chance and ended up never having a biological child

She probably would never have had her own child anyway, as her uterus was deemed 'inhospitable', (after tests into her & Chandler's infertility - where he had problems too, just in case you start on about how that was anti-feminist) so I don't think your point above carries any weight.

Summerbird73 · 07/05/2011 14:22

wow i dont mind Friends as a bit of light entertainment but i agree with this thread (and i try to stay away from this topic as i dont see myself as a feminist), like the other posters above it was a cheesy sitcom that drew me in Blush Grin

i heard that they only brought in Charley the black palaentologist as there were complaints that there were no ethnic characters

excellent post from showofhands (as copied by OP). Of course you forget that Ross also stole Charley from right under Joey's nose.

TheCrackFox · 07/05/2011 14:25

Actually, I do take issue with Monica's job being described as typically female. She was a head chef which is well paid and very unusual for a woman to become.

The rest of it was misogynistic twaddle, though.

RossettiConfetti · 07/05/2011 14:26

Enlightening thread - I feel very daft for never reading anything into Friends before now. For me (and DH), it's always been the equivalent of a piece of buttered toast, ultra-lite, nostalgic comfort telly put on now and again when we're waiting for a programme to start or want to wind down with rubbish TV.

We'll never enjoy it again, which is a good thing. This thread really merits being re-written into an article and published in a decent paper that has wide readership - I think I'm not the only person who has never looked at Friends this way, despite calling myself a feminist.