Gender Stereotypes In Summer Nights

The song Summer Nights lyrics consist of the prevalent 50’s stereotyped gender roles and sexist remarks. The mentality of high school teenagers of the 50’s on sex and relationships are apparent through this song, with two distinctive ideas being shared. Sandy purrs about the boy she met whilst Danny plays it cool when talking about his summer interaction. Sandy speaks of her summer fling being cute and extremely sweet, whilst Danny speaks of her being sexually pleasing and absolutely crazy for him. Both speak this way about the other because society has imprinted in them that these mannerisms are important. These teenagers reflect the social attitudes of the time, clearly understanding the gender roles they were born in to, such as a man being a woman’s knight in shining armour, sweet and able to provide, whilst a woman is passive, submissive and overly attached. Both friend groups also convey society’s message of gender roles in this song. This is proven when Danny’s friends want him to answer the question “did you get very far?”, whilst Sandy’s friends want her to “tell me more, like does he have a car?’ This isn’t the only incident in the song like this, as it continues to “how much dough did he spend?” and “could she get me a friend?”. These lyrics heavily demonstrate the differences between

Both virgin and slut shaming happen frequently throughout the movie, conveying the message that women should be sexually accessible to men, but not be too available. The message of virgin shaming is strongly carried through this song with lyrics such as “Elvis, Elvis, let me be, keep that pelvis far from me” and the opening line “look at me I’m Sandra Dee, lousy with virginity”. The whole song consists of lyrics to mock Sandy’s views on drinking, smoking and being sexually active, but the worst thing is that it is coming from girls who are supposedly her