The way the show is currently set up, the men are the active characters and the women are passive. The Millionaire's Club caters to wealthy, millionaire men who need help in the dating arena, in order to find their beautiful wives. Most of the time these guys are very handicapped in the area of social interactions but since they are powerful and have money, think they are entitled to have unrealistically high standards for who they should be dating. This perpetuates the notion that women are just sexual objects there for men's pleasure and that women are the submissive gender.
So, in my paper I want to discuss how gender roles would be portrayed differently if it were the women who were the ones in control. How would the show be different if it were powerful, millionaire women choosing young, handsome men. I think that this would really challenge the normalization of heteronormativity that is dominant in our society today. The way the show is now really conforms with the gender roles in our culture. It solidifies the idea of a dependent woman, whose only aspiration in life should be to marry wealthy and take care of her husband and children.
For my essay I will focus on a couple different episodes. I actually found that there have been two millionaire women in the club so I will look closely at those two episodes and show the contrasts between when the women and men are in the active role.
I'm really glad you are sticking with your essay 2 topic to write your final essay...I think the role reversal will be a strong argument and have valid research to back up your ideas. Your essay 3 sort of reminds me of The Bachelorette with a twist-because on The Bachelor and The Bachelor, they are "criticized" and "picked apart" by the show's host (like in Millionaire Matchmaker) It's also an extra interesting twist on The Bachelorette AND Millionaire Matchmaker because on MM now, the men are usually older-and are looking for younger women. If you reversed that and wrote about how that would be in your essay (older women/younger men) that would be interesting to discuss how society views that. Does society look down on successful women dating just-out-college hot 20 year olds? How are the roles defined now that would seem SO WEIRD to some people/our society in this case if women were the powerful ones. I also think it's almost humorous to discuss and research how men will be the ones being picked apart by the host-about their bodies, jobs, etc. I think this role reversal for your essay 3 will be great and really interesting to analyze how men will be placed in a more sexualized, passive, needy role.
ReplyDeleteI am also glad you are sticking to this topic because I can see it go many ways with the women picking the men. Im sure many will base their judgement not only on money but looks as well as we have seen in one of the episodes where the woman was to pick her man. She decided to pick the older man because she wanted to show people she wasn't shallow but before the date even started she ditched him and complained about how could she go out with such an "old" man? I mean she wasn't the youngest thing around either so why would she complain about a man being too old...it really frustrated me. It would be good to look at the two episodes and really dig deep to see how the men are different from the women millionaires and how heteronormativity is viewed.
ReplyDeleteI think this is going to be a very interesting paper. I think you have some awesome ideas and I can't wait to see how you implement them. I think you will be able to tie Yep into this paper a lot because through portraying women as the dominant gender, you will be defying everything about heteronormativity. I think it is going to be very interesting to see what you do with the advice the matchmaker will give the men about the improvements they need to make before they are ready to date a millionaire woman. I think this is going to be very entertaining and I can't wait to see what you come up with.
ReplyDeleteHi Nina,
ReplyDeleteI also like your idea a lot. I don't know if you've seen the episodes with Shauna (the most recent female millionaire), but Patti basically tells her what she tells the girls: she needs to be more feminine, tone it down, etc. And, Patti wants Shauna to date someone closer to her own age, because Shauna keeps trying to date younger men, who typically use her for her money.
The way that Patti and her team treat the men they pick for Shauna is also much more amiable (I think). One thing to think about could be: what would the show look like if the men were criticized for not having six-packs, muscular arms, etc.? If they were criticized for going gray? There are definitely a lot of ways you could play this, so that you re-present the female millionaire, as well as the men she might potentially be with.
One area I can see you researching is reality television dating. I have articles on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, if you are interested. I think it would help you to read some literature that focuses on how these types of shows typically portray men and women, so that you can think about how you might flip that. Good start! ~Megan