Being obsessed with 30 Rock and pretty much anything Tina Fey touches, I was thrilled to see a brief segment of her show shown during Missrepresentation. The video covered a lot of ground and taught me a lot, especially with the statistics (like # out of # of some-important-corporate-job are women) that were just astounding. I did not realize how much farther we, as women and human beings in favor of equal treatment and fairness, have to go.
30 Rock is a fantastic, ingenious, clever, witty, hilarious show that everyone should watch. While it is a comedy, it also hits on many stereotypes and stigmas we have about certain things, especially in pop culture. Following suit of Saturday Night Live, the show will play on issues such as politics, corporate craziness, race, and very often gender roles. The part of the video where some thickheaded ignoramus news reporter (male) made a remark about how if a woman were president can you imagine what would happen when she's PMSing? Well, apart from being a highly idiotic and obviously unintelligent remark, it is a typical response you'd expect from an ignorant man. There's a scene in 30 Rock where they play on this idea of a woman being so inhibited by her period that she can tell immediately when it happens, exclaim "Oh my Period!" and collapse on the floor. I've attached this clip of the show to support what I'm saying.
30 Rock clip: Oh my Period!
Kaley-
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post, and as a fellow diehard 30 Rock fan, I found your inclusion of the "Oh my period!" clip to be fitting and appropriate for the topic. As if one's PMS is so debilitating it prevents them from adequate job performance. On the logic of Amelia Earhart crashing her plane over the Atlantic due to her period, she was likely never found because her body was ripped to shreds by blood thirsty sharks! While it is a serious falsity facing women today, it is easy to put such ideas into a comical context because the idea of incapacitation by reason of menstruation is laughable.
Elise
You should add to this comment in order to get credit for it. It needs to be 200 words.
DeleteThat clip is awesome! It really demonstrates how that stereotype positions women as being entirely controlled by their bodies (as opposed to the perfectly objective minds of men).
ReplyDeleteI absolutely have more to say about this post! :) I think that the repetitiveness of the, “Oh my period!” video clip really reinforces the absurdity of women having little or no control over their raging hormones during their period. I wonder if this biological difference in men and women is an underlying reason for past and present day inequality, specifically in the workplace. While PMS absolutely does exist, it does not render us an inferior gender. This stereotype tells us that men have impermeable bodies and minds. They experience no turbulence that could ever distract them from perfect professional performance. They don’t even cry when they watch Marley and Me.
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