Meandering Thoughts About Sexist TV

So I'm clearly not the first to notice the trends of broad gender stereotyping on basically every kind of television show a human being can access, but I still feel like part of an odd minority of American viewers who actually realize what's happening on TV.

Maybe it's sitcoms that have, for the most part, been really bothering me. I think that's due in part to my TV habits not being the world's greatest, in that I'll visually consume nearly anything that's on as long as it's...well, on. So in my youth (ok, in my last summer) I saw a lot of those shows. You know, those shows? According to Jim? King of Queens? Yes, Dear? Two and a Half Men? Those shows that people like to say "Well look, the women in these shows are smart and thin and witty! It's the men that are dumb now! Isn't that a great step for society?" about? (Well, maybe Two and a Half Men needs to be in its own group wherein it isn't even operating under the pretense that it's being genderly equal and is just blatantly offensive to me as a viewer.)

There's a great discussion going on over at Alas, a blog about sexism in modern day sitcoms that you really should check out if you know not what I type.

But, before I devolve into a discussion of the terrible problems in most sitcoms (for a little bit of hope that not everything out there is complete trash, all How I Met Your Mother fans should read this article and take a little heart, or just watch some Seinfeld and let Elaine do the healing for you) I'd like to get to my actual point in posting this odd quasi-discussion.

I've been doing a lot of blog-browsing this week and have been searching endlessly for anyone talking about the gender inequality evident in children's cartoons or TV shows geared toward children under the age of 12. As a kid who wanted to be the red ranger and didn't understand why I always had to pretend to be the lame pink ranger at recess, I feel like the shows kids watch might be equally sexist, but much more dangerous, as they are targeted towards kids who learn a lot more from TV than most people like to think. It's really just a wondering I've been throwing around ever since I read part of a weird article about the gendering of good versus evil characters in Pokemon. Ever since I've been trying to think of a female Pokemon, but all I can come up with is Jigglypuff or maybe Togepi (Misty's weird egg I used to hate from the TV show), though they may just be effeminate male creatures.

So I'll hopefully be diving in to some more research on this topic later, but will keep my eye out for more brilliant discussion going on elsewhere in the blogosphere, and will keep you posted.