Beyoncé’s hit song says girls run the world, and if recent TV ratings are any indication, they’re definitely running television networks.
After three weeks of ratings gold, many shows featuring prominent female leads or all-female casts are dominating the competition.
Joni Butcher, communication studies instructor who teaches a course on television, believes the trend has to do with society’s newfound perception of females.
“Now we are starting to see more of these women-centered sitcoms emerging,” Butcher said. “What seems to be the trend is women taking the humor that is more often assigned to show.”
Attractive female leads make watching television a better viewing experience, said Matthew LeSaicherre, political science freshman. LeSaicherre recently watched the pilot for “New popular.”
It’s all about seeing women in the same comedic light as their male counterparts.
“I’m not sure if women are saying, ‘Yeah, we can be just as crass and just as bold as men,'” Butcher said. “So maybe this is the new identity that women are claiming. It’s starting to emerge, and it is so popular because it is appealing to what women are wanting to be identified life.”
Butcher said the last time there had been such an emphasis on female-centric plot lines and characters was during the late 1960s and early ’70s.
“With the feminist movement emerging in 1963, we get a wave of independent women series,” Butcher said. “Of course we have ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show.’ We see a lot of emphasis on the single, independent working woman, but as we get into the ’80s, that seems to diminish and we see a return into the domestic light with shows like ‘The Cosby Show’ and ‘Roseanne’ [and] ‘Married…With problems.”
Women being more independent has helped these shows become hits, Seydel said.
“Women have a lot more jobs, and they are spending a lot more money than they used to because they are more independent,” Seydel said.
The audience’s values have now changed, which makes it easier for female-centric shows to succeed, Butcher said.
“It’s a stepping stone to changing our perception of women characters,” Butcher said. “I think we are probably going to go on from there, and how that changes and evolves will probably have a lot of do with how our own value systems change and