Television - the leading model

In episode 7 of the first season of Desperate Housewives, Lynette throws a dinner party for her husband and his co-workers. She does this so Tom can pitch a proposal in the comfort of his own home. However, since Lynette was also a successful business woman in the advertisement field, she begins to take over and wow the guests with her ideas. This particular scene demonstrates that Lynette was a successful and powerful woman in the career field. Now as a mother, she is trying to keep up with the "Bree VanDacamps" of the housewife world. (Bree is another character on the show who is the "perfect" woman with the pristine home.) Lynette discovers that she was more successful as a career woman than as a mother. She is frustrated that she is failing in the role of a mother and woman.

David Gauntlett describes how it was accepted in the 60's - 80's for women to work until the birth of their first child. When the woman and her husband began a family, it was the cultural norm for her to quit her job and be a full time housewife. Therefore, there are certain expectations of women as soon as they becomes mothers. Many women, including Lynette in the show, feel they are failures when it comes to the job given to them by nature. Later on in this same episode Lynette breaks down because she believes she has failed as a mother. She sees her friends with the perfect home and perfect children and wonders why she cannot have the same. She feels alone and incompetent in a role so many other women make look easy.

In looking at this scene with Lynette and two other characters, why is it that women have this heavy expectation on them as mothers? Gaye Tuchman, in her book The Symbolic Annihilation of Women by the Mass Media, describes how while other forms of media like magazines have evolved with the time as far as the female image, television still remains the leading depiction of the model housewife. Television bombards women with a powerful housewife image that they are expected to uphold. Like the show Desperate Housewives, all of the women represent different approaches to the same message - women ultimately become housewives. Will this image ever fade from our television? Will this medium eventually show women as men's equals in the business world?