Gender Stereotypes In Legally Blonde

From looking at a variety of media it is clear to see that they try to pigeon-hole women to specific career fields and this can have a detrimental effect upon those women and young girls who are consuming the media; ‘negative portrayals of professional women can weaken women’s career aspirations’ (Ezzedeen, 2015). 

When looking at the roles of gender within the media, and more specifically films, the first one that came to my mind was the  Legally Blonde franchise. The basic plot of the first movie is about Elle Woods, a stereotypical blonde, materialistic, sorority girl majoring in Fashion Merchandising, she is the object of what Lauar Mulvey (2004) would classify as the ‘male gaze’.  After her boyfriend, Warner breaks up with her to find someone more “serious”, Elle decides to show Warner that she can be serious by getting into Harvard Law School and surprising him there. Upon arrival she sees that he has already moved on with another girl and so the rest of the film is about how she goes from trying to impress a boy with her looks to actually becoming a good lawyer and graduating top of her class whilst realising she deserves better than Warner. 

Even though the over-arching idea of Elle being a pretty, blonde woman realising she’s actually extremely intelligent and doesn’t need to rely upon a man is a counter-stereotype, the rest of the film does little to squash other prominent stereotypes within the media. For example her boyfriend Warner is portrayed as a strong, intelligent man who makes all the decisions in their relationship; everything he does is best for ‘him’. The strong and intelligent female professor comes across as ‘bitchy’ and unnecessarily harsh by throwing Elle out of her lecture for not knowing the answer to a question and pitting Elle against another girl called Vivian even though she should be trying to teach them and mould them into lawyers, especially as there is a minority of female lawyers. This is contrasted to her male counterpart who shares similar traits to her but instead comes across as respectable and successful. Moreover, although they are not main characters, Elle’s sorority sisters are all slim, predominately blonde and more focussed on partying than studying which is extremely stereotypical.

In conclusion although the idea of the film is to make fun of these stereotypes it does end up enforcing some of them in most of the other roles aside from Elle. However even in Elle’s role, due to the nature of the film being a comedy,  there is the idea that it is unfathomable that a pretty sorority girl could get into Harvard law which further reinforces the stereotype of dumb blondes. 

Bibliography: 

Ezzedeen, S.R., 2015. Portrayals of career women in Hollywood films: implications for the glass ceiling’s persistence. Gender in Management: An International Journal, 30(3), pp.239–264.

Mulvey, L., 2004. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. L. Braudy & M. Cohen, eds. Film Theory and Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 837-848.