It’s Different for Girls

Disturbed about the disparity of the toll popular success takes on the girls, I wanted to figure out why, and I had various different thoughts.

One is that the girls are usually marketed solo, whereas the boys are in groups. That may provide some camaraderie and dilute the spotlight, which could be helpful. If that is the case, Justin Bieber is still the boy in the most danger. I don’t know a lot about the personal lives of the Pussycat Dolls, but that might be a good sign.

I guess this might be a good time to give my news sources here. I don’t read any entertainment magazines on a regular basis, though sometimes my sisters will pick them up on vacation, and then I might flip through them. I don’t really watch any entertainment gossip shows. I would sometimes see the TMZ show, but I rarely recognized any of the people they were talking about. (They do seem to have fun in the staff room though.)

I do read the gossip section in the Oregonian, I do use AOL and sometimes click on links with celebrity information if a headline sounds interesting (though it usually is not as interesting as it sounded), and I do check Television Without Pity a lot, and most of my knowledge of reality television comes from their “The Most Heinous Personality on Reality TV This Week” feature. Therefore, I may know a lot less than most people on this topic, but I did looks some things up on Wikipedia. Anyway, that’s my full disclosure before I make my next statement:

It is possible that by complete coincidence the girls have much worse parents. You could make an argument for that. I don’t think it is generally helpful for your long-term happiness to have a “mom-ager”, especially one who will tell you that you are not pulling your own weight because you weigh too much. But can I tell you how much I don’t want to feel like I need to worry about whether the Kardashians have the emotional resources to lead happy and fulfilling lives? There can’t be any satisfaction in that. And I don’t want to worry about Leeann Rimes having a nervous breakdown when Eddie Cibrian cheats on her. Sure, when you cheat, you get a cheater, but she seems so fragile.

Talking with another friend, we discussed the possibility of it being somewhat of an age issue. The music is marketed more to youth, and the image of the boys is marketed to youth, but the image of the girls is also sold to men. Many of these girls do end up dating older. There is certainly more of an effort to make the girls sexy.

Really, what they do to make the boys attractive to adolescent girls is pretty innocent. Even looking back to when I looked through teen magazines incessantly, I don’t remember a lot of shirtless shots, and even if the chest was bare, there was usually another shirt or a towel or something. And that is fine, because stripping teenage boys for the pleasure of teenage girls seems pretty wrong.

Teeny skirts and pushup bras for the girls does not seem any less wrong, but it happens. I remember reading an early review of a Britney Spears concert (way before she shaved her head) and one thing it mentioned was the props were all of these childhood things, like beach balls and lollipops I guess (maybe that’s just what Katy Perry uses now), so there is combining childhood and innocence with sex. The boys may hold the teddy bears, but they do it fully-clothed. I suppose the epitome of it is the sexy schoolgirl outfit. I don’t think there is a sexy schoolboy equivalent.

There are two currents here that are bad. One is the infantilization of the girls, which is a problem, but then there is also the depravity of sexualizing childhood. I realize this is not anything new. Both of those trends have been around for a long time, and there’s no signs of them going away, but are we even thinking about the impact?

I did notice some common themes while listening to the various songs. For many of the male songs—so not just boy bands, but also Bieber and also Bruno Mars–it is about love for a girl who is beautiful and does not know it. It’s not just that he finds her beautiful because he loves her; that would be touching. No, it is specifically mentioned that other people are turning their heads to stare at how perfect she is, but she does not know. Also, they will give her gifts.

Clearly the ideal is an attractive girl with no self-esteem, and then we will buy her nice things, which she will take pretty seriously based on the lack of self-esteem. Because we all know that an unattractive female has no value, and one who thinks for herself or can buy things for herself just gets uppity, so I guess it’s a good thing that the boys are thinking like a predator because that’s how you get the really good relationships.

The female songs were often about independence or manipulating men, so I guess they deserve what they get, right? If a girl does realize she has some power over you, she is just going to use it to finagle away all your money. Go Girl Power!

I guess I have two divergent trains of thought on the subject. One is the importance of parenting.

Still listening to interviews with musicians, and reading, and something that has struck me is that the well-adjusted ones mention their families a lot, and mention them positively. It’s not that they are specifically asked about families or how they turned out well, but just as a part of talking about their lives and music, happy family memories come out. (Tyson Ritter is especially adorable with this.) Perhaps then it is not too surprising that the one who specifically mentions his father withholding love to make him play better does not seem to be able to get his act together. He knows what he needs to do, he doesn’t like his life as it is, but he just can’t seem to translate that into action.

I think this should be comforting for good parents. No, it does not mean that they will never say that they hate you, or do stupid things or worry you—that’s off the table. But if you are consistently loving them, encouraging them (not being a helicopter parent, because that gives you a whole new set of problems), and being there for them, you are giving them a very powerful gift, and that should give you some hope during the rough times.

Now if you are a child of bad parents, that is not comforting at all, and I’m sorry. It’s not fair, but you probably already know that. What I can tell you is that it is not a sentence of doom. You will need to do some extra work, and be more conscious of your choices, but you can rise above it, and you owe it to yourself to do so.

The other thought is that current society must be a big disappointment to the feminist movement. So, I will explore both of those things in the next few posts, after taking a side trip to compare two wildly different stories.

Also, I did find an post that I found amusing, and I am linking to that, but also it made one completely valid point in that why do we call it “girl groups” and “boy bands”; none of the boys are playing an instrument. They’re not a band. I guess it’s the alliteration, and now just a tradition because they’ve been calling them boy bands for a long time, but I’m going to try and retire that one from my vocabulary. It’s sort of an insult to those who’ve actually learned how to do something.

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/dc9/2012/04/beneath_the_dead_eyes_two_writ.php