There are a ridiculous amount of female characters on this show and each one of them is treated horribly by the show. It doesn't give them any respect and casts them into two categories: invisible, controlled girl or insane and needing to be controlled. The easiest way to do this is to run through the characters.
We've got:
- Rachel, who is overly ambitious, thinks only of herself and needs to be tough the importance of teamwork by her boyfriend and Mr. Shue.
- Quinn, who is rude and bitchy unless she's in a stable relationship. She makes stupid decisions by cheating and becoming pregnant. She must be taken down for trying to be prom queen by the hyper masculine Lauren, controlled by various boyfriends and once she rebels against all these forces against her, she is permanently removed from the glee club and not permitted to see her daughter until she acts like a proper woman.
- Tina is a non-entity on the show except for when she is being claimed an anti-Christ of sorts by the principal due to her slightly Goth nature of dress.
- Mercedes is completely ignored by the club and when she asks for anything, she becomes a demanding diva who is unable to handle anything but 100% attention and needs to be taught that not everything is about her when clearly nothing is about her.
- Santana is a sexually free bisexual of sorts who has an interesting time trying to discover her sexuality. Of course, she's overly feisty and conniving so she must also be kicked out of the glee club to punish her but let back in to allow her bitchy comments since her only use is to make others feel bad about themselves.
- Brittany is seen as completely dumb and while she tries to understand the world around her and gain some sort of empowerment, it only is achieved through unnecessary short skirts and needs to be constantly told of her intellectual inadequacy by males from her boyfriend to her teacher.
Those are just the teenage characters and they do not display any positive images of femininity for the largely female audience. This is clearly an issue with the show and while you may think, oh, it's a show of caricatures, you can't blame that on sexism. Well, why is it then that Artie was not even reprimanded in the slightest for looking down on Kurt for his slightly feminine audition and his second audition was laughed at by Artie for reasons that must only be the awkwardness of seeing an overtly flamboyant and homosexual man being intimate with a woman, which is a completely homophobic reaction. But nobody cares that Artie is portraying this behaviour and he is allowed to assert his masculine dominance over Kurt and any female character he sees fit to judge. The same is seen with Coach Beast who is a completely masculine character and portrays how masculinity is perfectly fine within the Glee universe, and in our society, but any sort of femininity is to be laughed at and mocked.
For a show that claims to be so completely about including people and showing positive images of homosexuality and opening people's minds, the show might want to show women and femininity in a positive light before it makes statements about being a positive representation of anything.
