Expectations on Women

As I turn on my computer, I almost always click on the internet first. As my homepage of msn loads I am able to view snippets of news articles of today’s society. This is how I keep up to date while I am away at college. Well flipping through the most popular news articles, I came across something interesting. The title that caught my eye was, “Is this the new ‘Friday’?” Fascinated by this, I clicked to find more information.

Everyone remember the extremely popular Rebecca Black’s music video called, ‘Friday’. The video basically showcases a girl dancing and lip syncing to an extremely cheesy song about her love for the day Friday. So after seeing a news article titled: “Is this the new ‘Friday’”, of course I could not stop myself. I clicked the link and came across a (similar to Rebecca Black) preteen, lip syncing to another very corny song about Thanksgiving. At first I was confused as to why anyone would allow this girl to make this video after the humiliation Rebecca Black experienced. But then I realized are we criticizing something so much more than that?

Remembering our class’s discussion on society’s theories of the perfect woman, I recalled a certain emphasis our class had. Women’s bodies were our main focus in class so I decided to take this a step forward. Since the reading focused in on older women transforming their bodies to look younger, I thought of the younger generation and the expectations they face. As a society, I believe that not only do we emphasize on looking young but we always emphasize maturity. This is a double bind for almost all women because they will never be able to reach a balance between the two of these expectations. I came to this conclusion by realizing how much Rebecca Black was judged and criticized. In all honesty, Rebecca was just being a teenage girl who was having fun, and her music video just happen to go global. As a culture, we expected Rebecca Black to have an amazing voice with a great music video. We did not think that maybe she was not capable of this because of her age. It also came to my mind that maybe things would be different if it was a boy in the place of Rebecca Black? Or if a boy replaced the girl singing about Thanksgiving? Would society judge him at all or more?

In conclusion, I think it is important to realize how difficult we make situations for girls. When we set up double binds such as looking younger the more you get older or acting older as the younger you are, these theories can lead to some serious consequences.

Video example:
Rebecca Black- Friday
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfVsfOSbJY0