"Monstrating" Females

For those who aren’t familiar with ABC’s show Modern Family, the show focuses around the families of the grandfather, Jay Pritchett, and his two adult children, Claire and Mitchel. The show has been called progressive because it the diversity in the families depicted. There’s Claire Dumphy’s nuclear family (heterosexual marriage with her white husband Phil and their kids, Haley, Alex and Luke), and Jay’s multiethnic family from a second marriage (to a younger, Columbian wife Gloria, and her son Manny, from her first marriage) and finally Mitchel (and his partner Cameron, another white upper middle class gay man, and their adopted Asian daughter, Lily).

However, a little closer look into the show can reveal a prevalent gendered undertone. In one particular episode, titled “Claire, Haley and Alex’s Emotions!” the main storyline revolves around the fact that all three of the Dumphy women are on their periods at the same time, and essentially to the Dumphy men (Phil & Luke) this is a poorly timed event that is worse than Armageddon! While the two goofy guys go to hilarious lengths to tiptoe around their “Monstrating” loved ones, the three girls are behaving in exaggeratedly dramatic fashions (i.e. emotional roller coaster times three).

This ties in to what we’ve been discussing in class about gender stereotypes as both latent and manifest content in the media. More specifically, Claire Dumphy is a stereotypical loving wife/mother (i.e. attractive, homemaker, primarily poised in the domestic labor sphere, and child caretaker). In this episode she and her daughters are seen as overly emotional, crying or bitchy, which plays into the typical gender stereotypes of women. While the producers try to use the fact that they were all on their periods as an excuse for their extreme behavior and the guys’ excessive precautionary lengths, by reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes it actually works against the progressive attitude that the show is typically known for.

By the time it was all over I didn’t know who to feel more sorry for, the girls for the ridiculous portrayal of them, or the guys for having to put up with it. This show is typically hilarious. I love it but have to admit this episode was disappointing in comparison to their standards for most other episodes. This episode alone definitely won’t discourage me from watching, but if you’ve never seen the show before I’d probably recommend you don’t watch this episode first (good thing it wasn’t in the first season!).