Gender Stereotypes In New Girl

New Girl is a sit-com surrounding the main character Jess Day and her three roommates, Coach, Nick, and Schmitt. The show follows Jess as she travels through everyday life. However, as I did my analysis on the first episode of New Girl, Pilot, I discovered that this show portrays and strengthens gender stereotypes and roles. These stereotypes include women being overly emotional and ditzy, while men are not. The show also enforces hegemonic masculine society. Women in this show are often portrayed as sexual objects as well. They use these tropes as a comedic relief in order to play off the reality of these interactions.

The First episode opens with Jess, who is a white woman, telling her new roommates that her ex-boyfriend had cheated on

There is a flashback when Coach asks Jess how he can be better at talking to women, this scene shows Coach yelling at a woman, presumably his client, trying to motivate her to push through her workout. However, this is taken the wrong way as the woman states that he’s mean. This is an example of benevolent sexism, Jess points out that he's bad at listening and understanding emotions, however he went to the only woman in the house when there were other people that he could talk to. While Jess is talking, he shouts at her to shut up, however he ends up apologizing afterwards. This insinuates that because he's a man, he does not understand how to communicate emotions or understand

We see this trope in Jess’s best friend Cece, who is an Indian model. Her first appearance in the show is her essentially checking herself in the mirror making sure that she is skinny enough for modeling standards. When she makes an appearance in Jess’s new apartment she is being gawked at. She makes a threat to the boys since she’s protective over Jess. However, Schmitt admits that he wasn’t paying any attention to her because he was too busy looking at her boobs as she was wearing a revealing dress. He continues to make sexual comments that seem to only make her annoyed. This trope is often seen in the media, especially in sit-coms, women are watered down to nothing but sexual objects. We don’t really learn about Cece except that she is just a model because she’s supposed to be the ‘eye candy’ of the show. The sexualization of women in media often leaves female characters one dimensional, or if they are not sexy enough, they are often portrayed as weird and awkward. Which brings us back to