Social Issues In Grease

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Grease, a very well-known and largely popular musical with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John as the main characters. It’s a Romance about how Danny (John) and Sandy (Olivia) meet over the summer and fall in love, but when summer is over they find out they go to the same school and are in very different social cliques. The rest of the movie is how Sandy changes herself to stay with Danny. While it is a very popular movie, it also has many issues in how it portrays stereotypes of gender and sexualization and a lot of the sexiest generalization and issues can be found in the lyrics of the songs. First off is how the actors are dressed and how there looks are portrayed. You better shape up, 'cause I need a man and my heart is set on you is the final song in Grease, Sandy sings how she needs a man and that guy (Danny) should shape up. After a few verses into the song, this changes to: (Danny) I better shape up, 'cause you need a man, (Sandy) I need a man who can keep me satisfied. What it seems to be saying to me is that a man should look good for a woman, and while that seems …show more content…

Grease seems to think that money is a very important component to a man being able to have a woman. A woman should not even consider a man if he doesn’t have money to spend on her. This stereotype is again reinforced with song. This ideal also seems to be emphasized with a stereotype that a woman need a wealthy man to take care of her, as if she's not capable of taking care of herself, and can only interested in a man if he is wealthy. In Grease, these stereotypes are expressed in the song Summer Nights, (more than likely a reference to when Danny and Sandy meet in the summer on the beach) early in the movie: Tell me more, tell me more, like does he have a car? [...] How much dough did he spend? And you don’t write a song if the lyrics aren’t important. It is very important to them what kind of car he drives and how much money he should spend, on the girl