Blog # 5 Gender and Sexual Tropes: Married with Children

Blog # 5 Gender and Sexual Tropes: Married with Children

The documentary film The Mask You Live In, is about how the media reinforces a stereotypical standard for male behavior. Male interviewees of all ages discuss how not only through peer pressure, but from other adults in their lives. How the environment that they live in, encourages them to deny their emotions,  resolve conflicts through violence and to carry a gender identity that promotes a misogynistic attitude towards females. No matter the race, social economic class or sexuality of a male, these gender stereotypes of what a “real man is”, are indoctrinated from a young age.

The show Married with Children… the “All Men Are Perverts” trope is applied to all the males on the show. The main character Al Bundy, along with his friends, co-worker and his son, Bud. Al always objectify women as sexual objects and feels he always has a need to display his masculinity. Al loves the strip club and looking at “nudy” magazines, but never wants to have sex with his wife, because of the “Real Men Hate Affection” trope. His gender identity eventually leads him to start a fake national organization called “No MA’AM”(National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood) a man only group that gather to do “man stuff”.

Although the females on the show make fun of the males, one of the tropes they use is “Virgin Shaming”, towards Bud. Bud is the more intelligent one of the family or even the show, and was the only one of the Bundy’s to go to college. Even when it is implied that Bud loves his family, and would be able to make something of his life. He still seen as a typical horny teenage boy and is ridiculed for not knowing the touch of a women. At one point he even works for a virgin hotline, and strays away from his duty to have sex with a caller.

The “Men Act, Women Are” trope is seen throughout the show. Peggy Bundy, Al’s wife and mother to Kelly and Bud, is the “Never a Self Made Woman”. She is the pretty housewife relies on Al’s job. Even the fact that she relies on Al to support her, she still makes passive insults about his job to her friends behind his back. While hosting a poker game, she asks her friends, “Does anybody have change for a dollar? I’m trying to cash Al’s paycheck.” What makes things worse is the way the show depicts of why she’s a bad wife. As a “Trophy Wife”,  she ridicules Al, she can’t cook, and she always wants to spend his money. But to be fair there are several episodes that show that her and her husband real do love each other.

But what I found interesting about the show, that even though it reinforces many gender and sexuality tropes. The one that is doesn’t apply is the “Slut Shaming” trope. Al and Peggy’s daughter Kelly, is made the target of jokes mostly for her lack of intelligence not her promiscuous lifestyle. What is considered a super trope, “My Girl Is Not a Slut”, is no way Kelly Bundy’s image in the show. In return the audience still enjoys her. However, it is still a show tradition for Al to kick one of her boyfriends out of the house, but not before inflicting physical harm, while the audience cheers along.