Why does American tv so desperately try to reduce women to something less than they are?

First, there's Temperance Brennan. She started out as some kind of superheroine (incredibly smart and gifted in her job as well as a renowned author with no antiquated social hangups), but no, that didn't fit into the mold of the "ideal woman" according, apparently, to the Great American Dream. Daring to have sex without also being in a relationship is bad, being independent is bad, and not appreciating a nice man is even worse. So Booth, with the approval of all her/their friends, started hacking and slashing away at the very points that made her her - that made her extraordinary - and lo and behold, everyone thought that was great. Now she's desperately going against her nature, turning herself inside out, hoping to gain a condescending pat on the head-- the baby's already on its way, I bet Booth will insist on raising it in the Catholic faith (bye-bye, Brennan's atheism), and preparing lunch for her "little family" will certainly also fall within Brennan's "new and improved" purview of life.

Kinder, Küche, Kirche, anyone? Blech. It turns my stomach.

Now, there's Jane Timoney. The most recent episode made me curse at my computer because, fuckdamn if it isn't the very same thing. Her boyfriend is pissed because she kept quiet about a relationship that ended a long time before they even met for the first time and of course he's right and she's in the wrong and should apologize despite him having flipped his lid?! What the freaking fuck?! Somehow I'm certain that wouldn't have been set as a moral if the situation had been reversed. When you get together with someone - as a woman - apparently you're required to disclose all your past sexual encounters in full, and if you fail to do so you're the bad guy? Huh?

Two primetime tv shows tailored for the mainstream. And this is the message they want to spread? Does no one see what's wrong with this picture? How demeaning it is getting such a "moral" shoved in your face when you only expect to be entertained?

I don't have an Y chromosome, but that doesn't make me less than a man. I thought we'd left Medieval times behind. Apparently, I was wrong.

It's not even the fact that women are depicted in such a way in tv that totally enrages me; it's the fact that either no one sees it or else no one comments on it in the mass media. Are there no feminists left? Is there a fucking conspiracy of silence in the wake of Stephenie Meyer's atrocious behavioral manuals for 13-year-old girls disguised as romantic oevres?

American tv apparently desperately needs some perspective, and its makers need to learn that the world won't just indiscriminately gobble up everything they serve, regardless of whether or not it looks and tastes like shit. In short? American tv, GROW THE FUCK UP.