The 1960s were a decade full of revolutions across America, in the form of both counterculture and pop culture. Second wave feminism was rampant, fueled by Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. The role of housewife began to be put under the microscope, and women began to wonder aloud whether they really happened to be second-rate to their husbands. Television sitcoms of the 1960s showed this shift in thinking, one sitcom in particular was I Dream of Jeannie. The plot of I Dream of Jeannie centered on an astronaut named Major Tony Nelson and his accidental discovery of a genie in a bottle. This genie, named Jeannie, rescues Nelson from the island he is stranded on and she hides in his luggage to follow him home. The rest of the plot is devoted to Jeannie fulfilling Nelson's wishes while he struggles to keep her existence a secret from the rest of the world. The key conflict in each episode usually involves Jeannie making a wish against Nelson's orders and working to correct the consequences of what she has done, usually saving Nelson from various difficult situations. However, due to the feminist relevance of the time period, the show's plot should be analyzed for underlying meaning. This second meaning focuses on Jeannie's role as a woman in a country with growing feminist values. Although Jeannie is subservient to Tony Nelson, she is ultimately still an independent and capable woman, thus representing the feminist movement of the 1960s. The fact that I Dream of Jeannie features two bumbling male leads, Major Tony Nelson and Major Roger Healey, as two of the three main characters says something about the show's portrayal of feminism. Jeannie inevitably used her magic to create something... middle of paper... ision. While Jeannie doesn't quite display the wit and cunning of Bewitched Samantha, and Tony Nelson doesn't seem quite as goofy as Bewitched Darrin, each's roles hold an important place in sitcom history television. The key point of this analysis is that even a role full of female stereotypes on television can turn out to be exactly the opposite of what it seems to show. Jeannie demonstrated that a woman can figuratively be second-rate to a man and at the same time not have to be second-rate in reality. As feminists worked to gain prevalence in second wave feminism in the 1960s, shows like I Dream of Jeannie may have seemed counterproductive to the cause, with the show having a woman in thrall to a man. However, in the end, I Dream of Jeannie proved to be an accurate portrayal of the feminist cause in the world of pop culture..