Sexism in Sitcoms: Interrelation

King of Queens is the easiest to define as the post-feminist sitcom. King of Queens’s plot is about two divorced mothers, who were friends since childhood, and who now live together in the apartment in New York, bringing up their three children together. It is like the domestic comedy with a slight twist that was no seldom on television in 1990s. So, in such case both parents are female. But in social dimension, in this family there are the roles of both father and mother in the parents (Cancian & Ross, 2001).

Still Standing was defined to be the most feminist program among all the prime-time sitcoms of the 1990s. However, its radical feminist tone was softened considerably near the end of its demonstration. Like King of Queens, it was also focused on the troubles of the program and. But Still Standing also concerned the backlash against feminist that occurred in the 1990s (Cancian & Ross, 2001). In Still Standing, the criticism of the so-called institutional inequality (that included sexism, gender discrimination, racism, etc) that was usual for feminism earlier, was almost over. The sitcom was focused on the problems of women without paying attention to the possibility of discrimination. What is more, it was focused on women’s issues like there were no men at all.

Another sitcom alike is Designing Women. Still Standing and Designing Women have some common features. Both built episodes around the problems of women. Both sitcoms underlined the so-called female bonding that was a rarity in the 1990s television (Moseley & Read, 2002). Though Designing Women was focused on the interior-design partnership of four women, it did not show that thee women try to live in “man’s world”. The sitcom emphasized that women should remain women, and, like Still Standing, men’s issues appeared only if the plot involved the discussion of the husband or partner of some woman. What is crucial, Designing Women became a piece of a line-up which included the series of sitcoms that, as expected, should attract the coveted working women’s audience (Moseley & Read, 2002). And in fact Designing Women did so.