Modern Family Stereotypes

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Today, I watched the pilot episode of Modern Family. I’d never watched the show before, but assumed it might provide some interesting gender roles and non conformities. Unfortunately, I was disappointed by the typical nuclear family portrayals and gender-role stereotypes that I’ve seen on most other family sitcoms. Let’s start with the Dunphy’s. Phil is the wage-earner of the family. He seems fun-loving and a bit goofy. I suspect that his wife, Claire spends as much time policing him as their three children. Claire is a stay-at-home mom and is as sensible, hardworking, nagging and under appreciated as you would expect her to be. Their oldest daughter Haley, brings home her first boyfriend in this episode, leading to her parents freaking out. Earlier in the episode, the mom comments on her too-short skirt, and she seems quite young to be dating a high-school senior. This scene reminded me of the So Sexy So Soon quote, “Sexualization equates attractiveness with sex appeal,” (Gonzalez-Mena 2013, pg. 273), which points our that many young girls equate self-esteem with appearance. …show more content…
Jay is a wealthy older man and is the father of aforementioned Claire. We can assume he recently went through a mid-life crisis, because he has lately married a hot-blooded Latina which is half his age.
His new wife, Gloria appears stereotypically vain and ditzy, as she struggles to grasp the English language. She has a son from a former marriage named Manny, who she

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