extra credit blog

I just watched an episode of the television show, All in the Family. In the episode titled,"Gloria and the Riddle," Gloria tells a riddle to Archie, Edith, and Mike. The riddle is about a car accident that happens. The accident causes the death of a boy's father and the young boy being brought to the hospital. When the surgeon sees the boy, the surgeon announces to the other doctors, " I can't operate on this young boy because he is my son." The goal of the riddle is to explain why the surgeon cannot operate on the boy. The two men can't come up with the answer, but Edith does. It is because the surgeon is the boy's mother. The two men did not and could not conceive that the surgeon was a woman. This reminded me of our topics on feminist criticism. The riddle is two waves of feminism. First, it is second-wave feminism because it defines equal opportunities for men and women in fields that are predominantly held by men. The surgeon is actually a woman, which Mike and Archie could not fathom because they still had the ideas that only men could be surgeons and women only nurses. Secondly, the riddle is an example of Third-wave feminism because it challenged the notion that women could not be doctors or surgeons. It proved the idea that women could achieve any goal or dreams that they wanted. It shows that women could be whatever their hearts desire. The riddle also shows the idea from a liberal feminist perspective where women hold positions that are traditionally male occupied. The episode reminded me of the Griner and Hammond articles. If a woman does not fit the mold that has been set by society, then it is hard for some people to recognize her as anything else. This was the problem in why Mike and Archie had about solving the riddle. These two men were so ingrained with the ideas that women could never be doctors that they could not see beyond their own beliefs to see the surgeon as a woman, only a man. It took the riddle to open their minds to the changes of the roles of women in our society.  The episode also goes against the idea of the cultural feminist perspective. This is the idea that promotes the socialized skills, activities, and behaviors traditionally defined as feminine. The very idea that a women could hold such a manly position as a doctor is too much for some people in society- men and women alike. This idea promotes the notion that women were not ever to be anything other than mothers and homemakers. Some people think that a woman who wants to achieve other and higher goal is just plain wrong. The riddle and this episode blew those ideas out of the water.No longer are women set in place to be only housekeepers, nurses, or housewives. Women can now be doctors, lawyers, and even politicians. This episode most definitely had an impact with the audience because it brought the battle of feminism and women's rights to the mass public. Many people's ideas of women in the workplace were changed for the better with this episode. This is the whole point of feminism: to let the world know that women and men can and should be equal on all levels. Why can't people just be what they want to be? Why must anyone be put into this one mold, and if they should break away from it, are they outcast or seen as not normal? In my opinion, women should be able to have the same rights to fulfill their personal dreams as men. This is what they have struggled for and have won in the past, and are still battling. There are still some people that feel differently about this, and they will fight it until their last breath. But, times they are changing and will keep changing.