Alaina Woodford

1328216
AE
1/24/14

I watched two episodes of The Office. The stereotypes I saw

perpetuated most frequently were 1) that women are objects to be

ogled by men, and 2) that there are distinctly girl things and guy

things.

The first episode I watched was called The Hot Girl, and it

centered on an attractive vendor, Katie, coming in to the office to sell

purses. Michael, the boss, only welcomes Katie into the office when he

sees how beautiful she is. He judges Katie on her appearance, and

compares her beauty with Pams, in front of both women. Although the

women protest to this behavior, it continues. This is an accurate, albeit

demoralizing, demonstration of how some men view women as objects,

and consider it a mans right to judge women on their appearance.

Viewers of this show see Michael making inappropriate comments and

getting away with it; clearly, it wont stop them from making more

inappropriate comments in the future.

In the meantime, Roy is fulfilling one of the most common male

stereotypes: sexually promiscuous, horny, and unfeeling. Despite being

engaged to Pam, he drools over Katie, and ignores Pams hurt feelings.

Katies purses serve as a divider between the men and women.

Katie says that guys are clueless about purses, so she convinces them
to buy the expensive ones as gifts. Jim seems to break this stereotype

when he states that purses arent just girls, they can be for guys, too;

however, after convincing Dwight to buy a purse, Jim makes fun of him.

Therefore, what seemed to be a break in the stereotypes ended up

being a reinforcement of them. This has a negative impact on viewers,

as it will do nothing to bridge the culturally-created gap between men

and women, and in fact will only separate the two camps even more.

In the next episode, Boys and Girls, Michael repeatedly

interrupts a Women in the Workplace meeting, trying to inject his

own male opinion into the conversation. When hes kicked out of the

meeting, he grumbles that theyre probably talking about clothes, or

him. Sadly, the girls themselves do nothing to counter this; in fact,

Phyllis is thrilled to be engaging in girl talk, and then is disappointed

when the meeting is not centered on clothes. This reinforces limiting

stereotypes in the eyes of the viewers.

Michael creates a counter-meeting, Guys in the Workplace, and

invites all the men to join, even Toby, who he mumbles is a guysort

of. Michael creates this sort of definition of Tobys manhood judging

by how much Michael dislikes him; by doing so, Michael is patrolling

the borders of masculinity. Michael continues to define masculinity by

saying that the warehouse men are real men, doing real mans work.

The second that Jan gets slightly upset, Michael calls her

hysterical. This prompts the other women to interrogate Jan on her

emotions, reducing her to a solely emotional person instead of an

emotional and rational one.

Finally, Michael concludes that you need men and women in an

office, just for the crazy sexual tension. Of course, the premise of this

entire episode is that all the workers are cisgender, heterosexual, and

reinforce the gender binary, which completely ignores transgender

people, as well as gay people and queer people.