Women's Issues
Jeopardy Category Answers The Question, ‘What is Blatant Sexism?’
According to the writing staff for the show Jeopardy, what women want isn’t equal pay, bodily autonomy, or even an end to tired gender stereotyping. On Monday night’s installment of the long-running game show, the second round of play actually featured a category titled “What Women Want”, and the correct answers included “Pilates” and “Levi’s jeans”. Are the writers aware that television demographics outside of “men age 54 and up”? Or do they think women don’t have time to watch TV because they’re busy doing all the vacuuming?
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PykyHB56knU]
The absence of forethought that went into creating this category is as prominent as the mustache still missing from Alex Trebek’s face. Watching the YouTube clip of this category felt like falling through a time warp into ancient history, except that it’s not ancient history, because in the year two thousand freaking fourteen, people are being paid to write heavily-stereotyped questions like these to be aired on an actual television network.
Yes, the essence of femaleness distilled by Jeopardy boils down to clothes, exercise (but the fashionable, girly kind), and being a relentless harridan about housework to a poor hapless spouse. (Just as an FYI, Jeopardy, none of my jeans really fit anymore but I don’t care because I’m always wearing yoga pants; back when I had time to exercise I was too busy earning my black belt to do Pilates; and I think my husband would faint if I ever remembered to empty the vacuum canister. Or to vacuum.)
