Stereotypes About Men

Tuesday’s gender skits were definitely entertaining. Two guys watching football with a lot of ‘fumbles’ going on, girls going shopping and sucking it in to try on a bag, and a girl forcing a guy to make the ‘right’ decision really reflected the generalizations we as a society tend to use when it comes to dealing with the opposite sex. It reminded me of sitcoms on TV where most of the jokes come from the conflicts between men and women.

There’s King of Queens, one of the many shows that has a bumbling husband with a beer gut contrasted with his beautiful and intelligent but nagging wife. The husband just wants to eat, watch football, and hang out with “the guys” while the wife pesters him to take out the trash, pick the kids up from school, and take her out for a nice dinner. The women are often portrayed as genuinely focused on the family and household as well as romance, whereas the man is basically depicted as a college student/bachelor type. There are dozens of this type of show – Everybody Loves Raymond is another example. Obviously they get enough laughs to keep producing episodes, but I think it can have a negative impact on the gender stereotypes.

Most women would say that it’s not alright to stereotype us as bimbos, sluts, shopaholics, or nagging wives. But I also think it’s not okay to generalize men as beer-drinking, fat, lazy slobs who don’t care about their family enough to pass up a game of poker with the guys to go to their child’s back-to-school night.

I think it’s important to realize that stereotypes about men can be just as bad as the stereotypes about women that circulate in society. I hope that as a class, we talk about this issue. I’d like to hear a guy’s perspective on it.