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How Desperate House Wives Labels the “House Wives."
Desperate Housewives (2004) is a comedy drama series about the secret lives of five women female characters who reside in Wisteria Lane, an American Suburb. Although the show was created in the 21st century, it does not make an accurate representation of women in the 21st century. The show portrays stereotypical female roles that range from the perfect mother to the usual trophy wives. This, therefore, shows that it is yet another example of misrepresented house wives, and although it is a 21st-century production, it employs a wide range of old stereotypes (Trier-Bieniek, & Patricia, 34).
First of all, the title of the comedy drama is pregnant with negative connotations. At one time, this caused a lot of controversy in the U.S. when the President of the Parents Television Council, Mr. Brent Bozell criticized the comedy drama’s likely negative effect on morality in U.S society. Family values campaigners were enraged by the main theme of sex. Some critics described the show as treating the issues of infidelity lightly and portraying sex as gratuitous (Ruggerio, 15).
Eddie portrays women as passive members of the society because she is successful in using her body and sexuality to get what she wants. For example, in her attempt to flirt with and seduce Carlos, she slowly takes off her clothes and is left standing with nothing other than her underwear illustrates that women are sexually objectified in the movie since this is not the first time the main female characters are shown in the drama in such provocative clothes.
The comedy drama seems to suggest that nothing much has changed since the seminal article on the male glaze that was penned by Mulvey. The article suggested that men ought to do the looking while the role of women is to be appealing and be looked at. According to this school of thought, the male glaze focuses o Gabrielle because she is the sexiest of all the characters (Trier-Bieniek, & Patricia, 55). She can be related to the 1983 movie Octopussy because both of these characters are seductive, manipulative, mysterious and live a life that is full of luxury. Gabrielle is filmed at all times dressed in tight fitting clothes together with high heels. Her choice of makeup is consists of heavy eye makeup and deep dark lipstick to illustrate that it is used to simulate sexual feelings and arousal in men. Her dressing is also aimed at fulfilling the male fantasy. She at one point dressed up as a kinky nurse. Her purpose in the film is to attract the opposite sex, and she does so without the use of her brains since her body does all the work.
Gabrielle exploits her irresistible model figure and her good looks when John attempts to avoid having sexual intercourse with her, and she resorts to undressing herself. This is another illustration where the movie shows housewives have nothing more to offer than their bodies and sexual pleasure to their working husbands. At one point, Gabrielle complains to Carlos that a businessman with whom she is working with always wants to grab her inappropriately. In response, Carlos urges her to let him go ahead. This short conversation illustrates that women are represented as nothing more than sexual objects and all Gabrielle needs to succeed is to let her businessman partner to grab her arse. Gabrielle is portrayed as an extremely hopeless individual because she is engaging in sex with someone that is not legal. Overall, this paints housewives as sexually frustrated beings who are in need of constant attention. In one of the scenes, she attempts to act in a maternal manner when John gets his finger hurt, and she meekly and seductively kisses it. John's finger many be interpreted as a phallic symbol showcasing her lack of sexual attention or satisfaction.
Gabrielle is also closely likened to the femme fatale who attempts to attain her hidden purpose by using feminine qualities such as charm, sexual allure as well as beauty. However, she may also simply be caught up in a situation from which she cannot escape just like in the film Lady from Shanghai. During the 1970s, the female gender was often portrayed as weak, victimized and ineffectual. Women’s interactions were normally centered on romance (Ruggerio, 36). In the comedy drama, Susan represents this overused as well as vulnerable characterization of women. She is predominantly presented to the audience as a mother. Her primary attempt was to seduce Mike who was one of her neighbors. However, in her attempts to do this she is regularly faced with a battle with Edie who constantly makes snide remarks that are aimed at humiliating and belittling her. Susan is regularly portrayed as having relationship disasters and this is always her storyline which reinforces the storyline of how the female gender was perceived during the 1970s. She is portrayed as weak because most of the time she ends up in tears after experiencing a relationship crisis. This story is a stereotypical representation of women as tearful and always being victimized. This stereotype reinforced the stereotype that men, unlike women, traditionally dealt with their own problems while women need help to deal with their own problems.
The narrator represents house wives and by extension women, as a vengeful lot. For example, in a scene where Edie’s fiancé attempted to run away from her and got into an accident, the narrator comments rather hostilely that it never occurred to him that God indeed could be a woman. This statement suggested that women harbor some form of vendetta or revenge towards their men. The women in the film are frequently portrayed to the male attention which can evidently be seen through Edie. This toxic competition for male attention leads to the development of a lack of trust between the women. This is because the rest of the women in the cast feel a sense of intimidation from Edie more so because she once dated Susan's Ex-Husband as well as Gabrielle's Ex-husband. The film contradicts the values of independent, successful women that are portrayed in Sex and the City.
The ladies who reside at Wisteria Lane are portrayed as unkind to one another due to their desperation to attract male attention. While the women in the film are constantly disappointed in their men, they still persist in their desire to affirm the male gaze theory. The film portrays the housewife as an idle woman whose only duty is to look pretty and go on shopping sprees while the men work hard and bring home the bacon. It also falsely illustrates that these women’s bargaining power lies in the sexiness of their bodies that should always resemble that of the super model.

Work Cited
Ruggerio, Alena A. Media Depictions of Brides, Wives, and Mothers. Lanham, Md: Lexington
Books, 2012. Print.
Trier-Bieniek, Adrienne M, and Patricia Leavy. Gender & Pop Culture: A Text-Reader. , 2014.
Internet resource.