Today is Saturday, February 11, 2012
Today is Saturday, February 11, 2012
The battle of the sexes will never end (although it’s obvious that girls are, in fact, better than guys), but it’s time some common ground is established. Guys need to understand the girl behind all her fancy clothes and make-up.
Media portrayals determine the stereotypes and standards for girls and guys alike. Sophomore Gabi Hamlett believes that the media plays an important role in the lives of both genders. “The media generally portrays girls as being very into boys and clothes, and boys as being really into sports,” Gabi said.
Movies, for instance, portray girls as rich brats who use their daddy’s credit cards to purchase designer clothes. The music industry depicts flawless girls wearing nothing but one-fourth of a bikini, making it seem as if they exist only for the purposes of pleasuring guys. Older generations maintain the notion that women are domestic beings who are supposed to stay at home, cook, clean, care for the kids all while looking hot in a floral dress and high heels. Society portrays women as the weaker gender in sports, math and science. These generalizations pressure girls into fulfilling unfair standards.
Of course, there are the benign stereotypes that girls find assigned to them. Any girl, female, woman, chick, lady, mademoiselle—whatever you want to call her—is usually expected to have the following attributes. She takes forever in the bathroom, looking in the mirror for no less than five minutes in doing so. She obsesses over the color pink, and freaks out at the sight of spiders. She shortens words to create clever abbreviations that end up taking the same or more amount of energy to say (i.e. Positive becomes pos, or Definitely becomes def ), and is ecstatic whenever within a five mile radius of the mall. In reality, most girls do not relate to more than one of these characteristics, if any. Behind her mask, each girl has an individual personality.
“What makes guys attracted to girls is when girls are themselves,” Gabi said. “That sounds corny but it’s when girls are down to earth.”
Girls are too often categorized based on their appearance, clothing and first impressions. In addition to media stereotypes, society in general perceives girls as distinctive from boys.
“Girls listen to people more, and they know how to respond to things while guys just say the same thing every single time,” sophomore Omri Fried said. “Girls are much neater than most guys and put more time into their work.”
Much, much more work. Girls, imagine this: rolling out of bed at 7:45 a.m., throwing on a semi-clean T-shirt, smelling to check if you need an extra coat on top of yesterday’s deodorant, and then running out the door. Sounds impossible, but this is the everyday routine for guys. We girls wake up at an unholy hour in the morning to calculate the perfect combination of tans and browns to apply on our faces. Guys get to pee wherever they want. Girls have to shave—everything.
And yet, despite the huge advantages to being a guy and disadvantages to being a girl, girls should never doubt their lucky extra X-chromosome. Girls, imagine not being able to wear make-up, not being able to go dress shopping for prom. Imagine not flirting, gossiping, shopping, texting and engaging in the non-stop girl talk boys would die to decode.
Without this lucky extra X, girls’ definition of fun would involve not showering and killing people in video games. Fortunately “girl fun” is less barbaric and a lot more fun. And girls, after all, just want to have fun.
