"Women in soap operas"

Most of the researchers started their work about gender in the soap operas in the 1980’s. That fact remains interesting, since the greatest explosion of number of the viewers took place in the 1970’s. Staring from the very first works in the 1940’s , soaps were mainly examined on their influence to the people. Many criticised them, for the lack of realism, bad influence, addictiveness, connotations of feminine passivity, laziness and vulgarity (Seiter 1994:388). That situation changed in the 1980’s when most of behaviours taken before for granted, became the subjects of work for sociologists. The soap opera phenomena, became impossible to ignore. Especially the question of why so many women enjoy them, became the interest.

Whetmore and Kielwasser noticed a paradox, analysing the opinions of the soap opera viewers. Most of them thought that reality of “Dallas”, “Dynasty” or “Bold and beautiful” is “silly” or “exaggerated”, but still in general ...