Time to rant again!I've noticed another disturbing trend lately. Somewhere along the way, it became cool to be dumb. A poor vocabulary and general ignorance has somehow become a point of pride and praise. I am completely boggled by this. I guess it ties into my other blog entry about how no one reads anymore.
The age of video games has taken over and being able to beat Guitar Hero III on the hardest setting gains more praise and admiration in pop culture than having a grasp on basic communication skills.
I find this most disturbing in girls, to be honest. Maybe because I'm afraid for the future of women. We seem to be transitioning into an era where women are admired for being hot and dumb. There's no need to be able to construct a proper sentence or complete basic math skills. Nope, not as long as your highlights are in season and your nails are done!
I'm by no means a feminist, I don't believe that women and men are equal in all ways* but I'm afraid that these Barbie-doll girls gracing the tv screen in reality tv are setting the bar both way too high and way too low for girls. Too high because the average girl can never achieve the too-skinny body type and level of extreme-primping these girls are admired for, and too low because they tell young women they don't need to use their brains. If you can get some collagen injected into your lips, why bother trying to improve intellectually? It sends young women a strong message: "Why try to better yourself on the inside if these power-Barbies can gain fame simply by being pretty and dumb?"
It's an interesting contradiction, since my favorite guilty pleasure tv shows are Beauty and the Geek and America's Next Top Model. To someone who hasn't watched Top Model, it might seem like it's just propogating the beauty over brains trend, and while there are definitely a few really really dumb girls, for the most part they tend to be fairly well rounded, and those who have nothing goin on upstairs are generally dismissed fairly quickly (thank god). And as far as Beauty and the Geek...well...there's a reason it's a "guilty" pleasure. I think it's somewhat of a morbid facination. Are there really truly girls out there who are that dumb? Apparently.
*While I am not a feminist, I do advocate respect for both genders and equal rights.
1 comment:
.... coupled with men (especially fathers) being bungling idiots that would drive a nail through their eye in minutes without the direction of a wife, we are doomed as a species!
I wonder how long it'll take the cockroaches to learn how to drive K-Cars after we're all gone?
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