Sitcoms and American Role Models

The show heralded as the first romantic sitcom, I Love Lucy, premiered October 15, 1951 (Ross). It featured a dull-witted, but beautiful and funny Lucille Ball starring opposite the intelligent and ever charming Desi Arnaz. The show highlights women as irrational, feeble-minded beauties, incapable of self-sufficiency and unable to perform basic tasks of everyday life. Things have changed since then. Women have risen out of the home and entered the working world at full force. Consequently, the representation of women in contemporary romantic sitcoms should be different. Women should be out…