Current Mood: annoyed
10:24 a.m. - 09/26/2007
Sexist soaps
So I was watching GH Night Shift the other day and there were some things about it that really bothered me. And when I thought about it, they are kind of true with most shows. The main thing that annoyed me is how on almost every show where a woman has an abortion it is this traumatizing event that changes thier life forever and that they end up regretting every time they see a baby. It's an obvious attempt to push pro life views on the public under the guise of being pro choice because the woman actually went through with it. In real life that doesn't happen. Studies have shown that for about 95% of women who have an abortion the feeling that they have after the procedure is one of great relief. So they're not going to drop out of school because the experiencne was too traumatizing, or cry themselves to sleep every night and mope around isolated from everyone during the day, or freeze up and inadvertantly sabotage their carreer because they see a newborn.
The next thing that annoyed me was the implication that all women have this crazy biological clock that makes them all want to have babies so badly that they are willing to sabatoge their carreers and relationships, and act irrationally and irresponsible to fulfill this innate desire. They also make it out like this is normal for a woman and if she doesn't feel that way then there is something wrong with her. For example the female doctor who explicitly stated that she never wanted to have children and never even considered it is a nymphomaniac who literally sleeps with everyone on the show.
So pretty much we have 3 representations of women on this show all very negative in my opinion. We have the doctor who acted irrationally and irresponsibly and almost gave up her carreer and did give up her relationship because her desire to become a mother was so great. We have the doctor who never wants to be a mother who is a sex crazed maniac. And we have the nurse who gave up being a mother for her carreer and regretted her abortion so much that she froze up during an emergency procedure just because she saw a newborn baby.
Another thing that I noticed is that while the show does have plenty of female doctors, there are no male nurses. Which I guess is only slighlt sexist in comparision with the other borderline misogynistic views expressed in the show.
Yeah I know I have way too much free time on my hands to pick up on this stuff and to actually take the time to write about it. And in spite of it GH is still one of my favorite soaps. But the blatent attempts to push prolife ideals onto the viewers by making every woman who has an abortion regret it really irked me.
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