Women Portrayal

Desperate Housewives started in 2004 and is now starting season six this fall. Seeing the previews when I was in 8^th grade, made me want to watch the show because it seemed like the “real world.” I, being a 14 year old girl, was not supposed to be part of the target audience but let me tell you, teenagers have become part of the target audience along with men as early as their 20’s. When the show came out, it was directed towards Women in their thirties and forties. Not long after the show came out men ages twenty on up as well as teenage girls ages thirteen on up have become the target audience.

The cast of this very dramatic yet entertaining prime time show includes five women and four men in their late thirties early forties. They are all good looking and healthy, slimmer characters. Gabby who is an ex-model is a married to Carlos, a rough business man. Susan is a divorced mother with one teenage daughter; Susan also dates and marries Mike the mysterious new neighbor. Lynette is a former businesswoman and stay-at-home mother of four. Lynette is married to Tom who quits his job to be stay-at-home dads in hopes of letting Lynette go back to work. Bree Van De Kamp seems to be the perfect mother of two is struggling to save her marriage with Rex who later dies and Bree marries Orson. The last character is a single pot-stirring Edie Britt. The women aren’t in minorities in the show but throughout the seasons, homosexual men do come into play as some neighbors who are moving in the neighborhood.

Obviously, there are a lot of main characters in this story line but I think the leading role is held by women because they all get along and hang out while the men go off and do their own thing. The show is supposed to be based around the women. They are all dressed fairly “normal.” The women are usually wearing work attire, scrubs, the weekend jeans and shirt or a cute little sun dress. Every week the women are portrayed because they show the women doing what women in actually life are doing. You have Gabby who has an affair and is always shopping, Lynette who is the stay at home mom as well as Bree. Susan is trying to work and hook up with Mike and Edie is trying to get all the women’s left over’s when they break up or “divorce.” Overall I think the show accurately portrays women because they are just demonstrating on what women now-a-days are up to when the husbands are out working and how full of gossip women are.