Ligia Urdiales Institutional Artifact Project

There are certain customs that we never leave behind and for most people it is very important to continue with that mindset. Gender roles has played a big part in people’s lives. When we talk about gender roles we refer to the behavior or role that a person must follow based on their gender, in this case women have always been seen as sensitive and caretakers and as someone who needs a man in order to be stable, while men are the leaders as the ones with an important job or position in society and they are the ones who are supposed to provide for their families. An important artifact that I believe is important and needs to be analyzed is the show Friends. There are many events that take place that are very important and could be analyzed since this shows how gender roles, privilege and objectification play a big part of the 6 friends in this show. I will mainly be focusing on Rachel and Ross since these characters evolved through out the show.

As a woman I believe this artifact is important because the idea of woman needing a man or even a male figure in general to be successful is not always true woman can achieve great things alone and be even more successful. I do believe that in some cases race privilege allows woman or any gender to be able to have more opportunities to grow. In this case Rachel is a white privilege woman, meaning that as a white person she is seen superior than others and although she might not have the experience or the qualifications for some jobs she is definitely handed opportunities. Although Rachel’s white privilege helped her a lot she did work hard to keep her job and prove that she is capable of accomplishing things alone.

In the show Rachel was portrayed as a woman who depended on her families money, and she was going to marry Barry who was wealthy without loving him, when she made the decision of not marrying Barry she finds herself lost because she has never been on her own. She than proceeds to get a job, she finds a job as a waitress which is not a very professional job for her, its a low paying job for her or any woman, and its usually the men who get the high paying jobs, and we see this change when Rachel evolves with her jobs and even gets an offer in Paris. However Ross expects her to stay in NYC for him, after he finally realizes he loves her she must give up on her dream n order to stay with the man she loves however the question rises to me is why didn’t he move to Paris with her in order for her not to give up on her dream job?

Another great example of gender roles Ross and Rachel are trying to find a nanny for their daughter and Rachel wants to hire Sandy who is a man as the nanny and Ross is against this because he does not believe a man should be a nanny and he does not agree with the fact that Sandy is very emotional. Ross believes that man don’t cry. In the show Ross tells sandy, “I’m not comfortable with a guy whose as sensitive as you”. He also mentioned that he isn’t comfortable because of his father since while he was growing up his dad was a tough guy. This shows that Ross’s way of thinking man should never cry and be tough because that was the way he was raised. After  Rachel ends up not hiring Sandy because of Ross, this comes to show how man can have certain control over the decisions women make.

Objectification refers to the action of degrading someone to the status or being more of an object, and to be used for certain things. We see objectification occur with Rachel since men are only interested in her beauty and only want sex with her. Although she worked hard to accomplish her goal she was always seeking male attention. When Chandler tell her coworkers Rachel only wants to have a fling multiple are interested, but when he told his coworker Patrick that Rachel was actually looking for a serious relationship, Patrick ended up breaking things up with Rachel. Through the show Rachel never finds a serious relationship other than with Ross.

After going into depth and analyzing the show through gender and privileges it made me realize things that I personally did not even realized when I first watched this show. After watching and discussing gender roles, sex and gender in general it made me see certain episodes and really see the meaning behind them. Every women in this show either had a low paying job meanwhile the men had jobs such as an actor , office, and paleontologists. It was interesting to see the roles be reversed in the show when Rachel finally gets her dream job, Monica gets a job as head chef, while Ross is on temporarily leave due to his behavior and anger, Chandler loses his job and does not like the fact that now Monica is the only provider at home. This show evolves and it shows us different aspects of how gender roles are implied and it breaks that, like I mentioned Sandy is a very emotional man, Monica becomes the provider and Chandler is at home cleaning and Rachel who was always very dependent on her families money is evolving with getting a job I the fashion industry which is what she always wanted.