The pressure put on adolescents to be attractive and appealing to other people through television, film, and media is prevalent. Additionally, the portrayal of relationships in these medias often show unhealthy relationships as the standard. While there are some cases where the point of the show is to showcase an unhealthy relationship, many of the shows teens romanticize are displays of toxic relationships.
Many books and TV shows popular with teenagers, presents problematic issues pertaining sex between men and women. This is especially apparent between Edward and Bella’s relationship in Twilight. Twilight is a best selling young adult book that romanticized obsessive and abusive behavior. Anyone who’s familiar with Twilight can recall the scenes where Edward would sneak into her room to watch her sleep. Or the scenes where Bella would freak out with anxiety attacks because of their relationship, she even attempted to commit suicide when she can’t be with him. This screams the opposite of healthy and she chooses to drop everything if it means she can be with him. Another popular example would be Ross and Rachel from Friends. They constantly act off jealousy and selfishness and take it out on one another. When either of the two try to move on with someone else, something is always sabotaged by one. And the whole “break period” was just endless amounts of feelings being invalidated, and they lie to one another frequently on the show. While the show is comedy and not so much focused on the romance, it is heavily set on relationships and Ross and Rachel have always left an impression on viewers with their relationship. While i’m not saying people should not enjoy this kind of media, TV does inadvertently, influence many young teens perception on relationships. Men and boys receive these pressured through the media as well, and feel as though they should be acting the same way. 34% of boys say that several times a week or more they hear male characters on TV or in movies who make sexual comments and sexual jokes about women characters. Through this statistic we can see that the way characters act, and especially the portrayal of relationships gets noticed and taken into account.
Even relations between friendships are frequently unhealthy and become stereotyped. Betrayal and undermining are common forms portrayed on TV with friendships, especially ones between two girls. A good example of this would be Serena Van Der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf from the show Gossip Girl. Serena’s relationship with Blair was undoubtedly toxic, for example she went behind her back and slept with her boyfriend. To take it even further she sabotaged her wedding just because she was jealous, constantly ditched her and tried to steal her “spotlight” whenever she had the chance. In the show she even says often that she needs to hold herself back from being better than Blair. None of these actions displayed in the show are normal to say to someone you claim to be your best friend. These kind of behaviors can be persuading to youth that it’s normal, and actually beneficial to get ahead in life. For people who believe in these show stereotypes, studies show that they are more likely to be cyber-bullied or be cyber bullies themselves.
For men on the other hand, most of their friendship relationships are used for comedy. Men’s friendships focus on their beginning with a somewhat similar format to romantic comedies. As a result of this the term of “bromance” has become prominent due to influence from TV. However, bromance comes from the idea that male friendships are too close to homosexuality, and they capitalize humor off of that. This kind of thing is problematic for a multitude of reasons, but it clearly dictates the behaviors of young boys. Many feel like they need to “act masculine” because of the way this is perceived and many feel the need to avoid feelings of friendship or any emotional expressions in extreme cases.
The team continues to get better under Carter’s guidance and become undefeated in the season and goes on to win a holiday tournament. After winning the team sneaks out to celebrate their win at a party, while Carter becomes aware of the players consistent absences in all of their classes. Because they were skipping classes and receiving poor grades, it went directly against the contract that the team had agreed to sign. Disappointed with the teams defiance against the contract, carter locks the gym and sends the team to the library where they will be tutored by their teachers until the agreed upon gpa of 2.3 is fulfilled by every member on the team.