Tuesday, January 8, 2019

Pretty Girls Can't Be Successful???

Every now and then I like to zone out and watch a mindless guilty pleasure show; I mean who doesn’t? FreeForm is the main source of a lot of my past and present guilty pleasure shows: Pretty Little Liars {why did it have to end?!}, Young & Hungry, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, The Fosters, Switched at Birth – you’re probably starting to get the idea now… Tonight I was watching one of FreeForm’s new series, Good Trouble, a spin off of The Fosters. 

In the first episode Callie starts her job as a law clerk and Mariana starts her new job at a tech company. Now, if you have seen The Fosters, you know that Marina is a bit on the superficial side. Anyhow, so Marina seeks out another woman who works at the tech company and basically asks her what does it take to be successful? And one of the advice points was to dress differently so she would be taken seriously… 
Now, I get that there are different levels of professionalism and different fields call for different sorts of dress. But the comment that was made on a show whose key audience is probably between 13 and 20 just rubbed me the wrong way. Seriously, what kind of message is ‘you need to be dress plain and dull yourself down a bit’ to send out to impressionable girls and young woman in that age range? Lately it seems that the media in general has been putting an emphasis on a woman’s appearance even to the point of a movement that has developed over the years to do a way with Disney Princesses…

Now, I am all for women’s rights, but the thing that gets on my nerve with women’s movement is that somewhere along the line it can turn into too much about a girl/woman’s appearance. Isn’t shaming a girl for being put together just as bad as shaming a girl for being too plain?

When building girls up, the message that seems to get lost in translation is who you are on the inside is projected on the outside. In my experience and in any situation the people who are nice, thoughtful, caring, funny, smart etc. are the ones that seem to become more attractive over time. It’s someone’s personality and view of the world and how they carry themselves that matters, and it’s what on a person’s heart that is eventually projected outward. It’s not in a shade of lipstick or if you are a dress or pants type of a girl that really matters. 

At the end of the day in order to be happy, people need to stay true to their authentic selves whether that means taking the time in the morning to do your makeup because it makes you feel good or just having a 3 minute morning routine because you are a no fuse person. Once you start going down a path of trying to fit into a mold that’s not you, that’s when you start losing a sense of happiness, and what is life without happiness? And what is better in life than being confident in the person you are?

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