Fiona's Blog: Girls, Women & Stress on Screen

A recent study found that stress levels among female students are rising, something I see reflected in the media's portrayals of intelligent girls and young women. As a high school junior, I am no stranger to stress (and the pimple army it releases), not only because I witness people around me deal with it everyday, but also because it is portrayed in television and movies as a standard part of girls’ lives.Last week I blogged about my own stress regarding the SAT. Apparently, the issue doesn’t go away when girls leave high school.

Stress levels among college students are higher than ever. The study also questioned college students about their high school stress-levels; girls once again came out ahead. Eighteen percent of men said they had been frequently overwhelmed in their senior year of high school, while 39 percent of women reported feeling that way. In addition, the gap in reported emotional health among female students and male students has widened in the past twenty-five years.

So essentially, stress goes up, emotional health goes down (not rocket science—who’s going to be happy with that many pimples, anyway?). But, why is this more prevalent in girls?Girls are commonly thought of as being more academically driven, and are often portrayed as obsessively so. Characters such as Tracy Flick in Election, Rachel Berry in Glee, and even Hermione Granger in Harry Potter (who I generally think of as a positive example of a smart girl) come to mind. These girls are overachievers, who put academic pressure on themselves and sometimes suffer emotionally because of it. These characters are a definite type, and I have never seen them cast as males.A comment from Linda Sax, a professor of education at U.C.L.A., made me think about another common female image I see on screen. Professor Sax discussed the survey’s findings on the different ways males and females spend their free time: “Men tend to find more time for leisure and activities that relieve stress, like exercise and sports, while women tend to take on more responsibilities, like volunteer work and helping out with their family, that don’t relieve stress.”This brought to mind the image of the overextended, frustrated mother so often depicted in TV, movies, and commercials. (This character is usually joined by the uninvolved, carefree father.)

Almost every commercial for a household appliance or laundry detergent seems to feature the standard cast of a knowledgeable mother as a caretaker and a bumbling father as a fool who can't figure out how to use the washing machine or toilet plunger.

The characters of Claire and Phil Dunphy from the show Modern Family also perfectly fit into this mold. She runs around cleaning up after all his mistakes, frequently yelling at him, while he gets to be the "fun" dad with all the responsibility of his six-year-old son.Could it be that adolescent, perfectionist female characters who are unwilling to give up control, and hysterical, stressed out mothers in TV shows and commercials accurately portray the life of girls and women today? Were these characters created because they are realistic? Or, have girls grown to become like these characters, because we think it's what expected of us?In TV, girls aren’t always depicted as stressed out. But if they’re not, they’re generally portrayed as unintelligent. These extremes are perfectly exemplified by the two daughters on Modern Family, who play the quintessential teenage sexpot and typical pre-teen geek. Does this dichotomy, however unrealistic, make girls feel like they must become one of these two characters? Does it make putting pressure on oneself okay, socially expectable, or even predictable? Does it make stressing out a uniquely feminine state of mind? It’s hard to know which came first (the stress or the characters), but I hope we can find some other models for girls to follow. What girl wants to make it through the stress of being an adolescent only to grow up and yell at her husband about a toilet plunger?Fiona Lowenstein is a high school junior, weekly guest blogger and Girls Leadership Institute alumna. Read more of her work here.