Analysis of New Girl Gender Roles PDF

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1 Dr. DeSoucey Sociology 202 September 16, 2018 Analysis of New Girl: Gender Roles As I analyzed an episode of New Girl, I looked at how women are portrayed and how gender roles play a critical part in the show. I chose the first episode called, “Pilot”. New Girl is a comedic television show that enforces gender roles. In this episode, we meet main character, Jess Day, who just endured a hard break up. Throughout the episode, we see how her breakup has caused her to move and meet her new roommates: Schmitty, Coach and Nick. Jess is an elementary school teacher and throughout the show, she is very ditsy and juvenile. The episode opens with Jess and CiCi talking about how Jess is going to seduce her boyfriend after she comes back early from a trip. Jess goes home to find that her boyfriend has another woman over and had cheated on her. The time proceeds to the present and shows that Jess now lives with three men she found on Craigslist. Throughout her first few weeks in her new home, she is extremely sad, cries copiously and watches Dirty Dancing on repeat. Her roommates then convince her to go out and find a new guy to rebound with. Throughout this whole debacle, she is stood up and her three roommates must come to her aid. Jess, a Caucasian teacher is the only major female character on the show. Her Persian model friend, CiCi plays a minor female role. The major roles of men outnumber Jess, 3 to 1. I would say Jess is a major character because the entirety of the show revolves around her and how her actions affect others. Without her presence on the show, there wouldn’t be a strong plot, and the show would more than likely lose its audience. CiCi plays a minor, but crucial role in the

2 episode because without her, Jess wouldn’t have put herself out there to impress her boyfriend or had the confidence to wear a nicer dress to her date. The female characters on this show have either highly sexualized roles or childish and prudish roles. CiCi is immediately of interest when Jess says she is a model and that is in fact the reason why Schmitty let her live with them. Jess is made to be prudish by wearing long skirts and acting like a child when she sings or acts unintelligent in comparison to her male counterparts. As Jess cries and watches Dirty Dancing on repeat, her weakness and inability to move on without the help of others is emphasized. When she drinks rosé, it shows that she is very feminine and juvenile, because everyone else is drinking hard alcohol. After CiCi defends Jess to the males, it shows that she is the stronger more dominant female, playing into the fact she is a beautiful model. While this show is intended to be comedic, it still portrays women in a negative light and makes them out to only have surface level personalities. This portrayal of women either objectifies them or treats them as unknowledgeable. Throughout this episode, all of Jess’s roommates laugh at the fact she drinks rosé, sings to herself and that she is still hung up on her ex-boyfriend. Schmitty also specifically objectifies CiCi and focuses on the fact she is a model with nice breasts. Luckily, Coach and Nick make him put a dollar in the “douchebag jar” each time he makes an unpleasant remark. In this episode Jess and CiCi are portrayed as onedimensional characters that either just cry in Jess’s case or are a “stupid model” in CiCi’s case. Throughout this episode, the images of females are degrading to women empowerment only furthering societies gender roles, while males treat them as inferior and sexualize them. Jess specifically acts very childish by bursting into random songs she writes about herself, or wanting to wear overalls on a nice date. Most women know that this is not normal and is not a good

3 depiction on the average woman. The plot line in this episode also revolves around Jess’s lack of success with men in her life. From being cheated on to being stood up on her date to rebound from him; throughout this episode the females are either very sexualized or depicted to be ditsy and hung up on a male. The content that is present in the episode only further pushes gender roles and the stereotypes that women are weaker and need help. While watching this show it is very evident that the female characters are very juvenile in comparison to the male characters. This episode shows that women get knocked down very easily and need help from men or a more empowered female. The fact that CiCi is a model, along with her proper attitude make her seem superior in comparison to Jess, a teacher who cries and sings constantly. This affirms societies stereotype that models and beautiful people are better than others. I think TV can heavily play role into how society views women. It can either build them up or make them look like children who can’t support themselves. Before analyzing this show, I always knew that TV did not do a good job portraying women, but I never knew it was to this extent. The fact that there are other shows that are worse than this, that children can watch, only sets our future generations up to continue our social injustice. If you were a young girl, shows like this could make you think that it is normal to have to depend on others for support. It diminishes women empowerment, and makes us look fragile, when we should be quite the opposite. While this show is funny to watch and not always as diminishing as this episode, it is still an unacceptable example of how gender roles should be portrayed. It is in fact, the perfect example of how society views women in comparison to men....