Doing gender Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Doing gender - Essay Example We understand in this it is not so much an achievement. Also gender can be achieved only till the very early years after which it becomes static and unchangeable. The second term ‘constructed’ is perhaps of most importance to both anthropologists and social scientists who constantly lay bare the various apparatus working within a societal unit, be it a family, a state or a community which defines behaviour codes pertinent to a certain gender and anomalous to another. In this paper we shall take up the character of Monica Geller from the sitcom that gave television a trailblazer Friends and see how gender is constructed everyday through actions, through pre-conceived notions and through popular belief. The T.V show Friends had been on air from September 22, 1994 to May 6, 2004. During the course of which we saw the development and bonding of six friends Chandler Bing, Rachel Green, Phoebe Buffay, Monica Geller, Ross Geller and Joey Tribbiani. For a better understanding of the issue we shall deal in it becomes imperative to discuss in a nutshell the kind of relationship that the six friends share. Monica Geller and Ross Geller are siblings, Monica being the younger, Rachel is her high school friend who was dated by many guys unlike her. Ross too had a crush on Rachel in those days. Ross and Chandler are friends from college. Chandler who lives across the hall from Monica shares his apartment with an aspiring television actor Joey Tribbiani. Phoebe we learn later had been Monica’s roommate who had moved out but remained friends. From the very first episode Monica appears to be unlike her delicate form. Her personality exudes an aura of extreme strength. Her nature is extremely over powering and she’s used to getting her way in everything. She seems to be weather-beaten in that she knows the world more than her friend Rachel Green who in the pilot episode comes out as someone to whom the only way of not depending on the parents was by get ting married. This very idea accorded to Rachel is also gender specific. Even though we laugh at the momentary humour, it is in fact a gender construction that pretty women(or for that matter women in general) can spend their lives without having to earn their bread by depending on the patriarchy which primarily constitutes of the father and later the husband. That Rachel had been moulded into such an idea is also a form of interpellation by the society. That she finds nothing wrong with it her acceptance of her gender role as daughter and wife (in both cases dependant) is her way of accepting a concept of gender which is simply constructed. In contrast Monica who is said to be bossy and competitive is portrayed as a type which in the later seasons would verge on tomboyishness and trace back its roots to her obesity in her school years and the second-shot treatment she always received from her parents who would be too busy doting on their first born Ross. This preference of the male child over the female child is the most obvious kind of gender differentiation. But that Monica decides to fight back instead of accepting her place as the ‘second’