While scrolling through Facebook this afternoon, I came cross an article from "Total Frat Move," an online blog centered around creating funny and relatable content for its "frat guy" audience. The article was titled, "50 Ways to be the Perfect College Girlfriend," a numbered list of a contributor's ideal qualities for a girlfriend in college. As I read through the list, it kept getting worse even when I thought it couldn't. Some that particularly stood out for their stereotypical and offensive content were "20. Don't look like you just rolled out of bed for class," "25. We don't need to know the specifics of your period. A simple warning will do," "40. Lie about how many people you've had sex with," "42. We hate condoms, and everyone else hates abortions. You're a grown up now, it's time to get on the pill," and my favorite, due to its unbearable hypocritical nature, "45. We will never be Channing Tatum. Deal with it."
These several items from the list simultaneously slut-shame, stereotype, and create impossible expectations for college women, let alone all women. A large reason that women are so insecure is because they are told to not talk about their periods, or sex, or safe-sex. A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with her body, and these expectations are hypocritical and unrealistic. Women are expected to look nice at class, and follow all these items on the list, yet men don't have to meet women's expectations of being like Channing Tatum. According to this contributor, unrealistic expectations only go one way.
The reality is that women are held to these unrealistic expectations because of the way they are portrayed in media. These stereotypes that are portrayed so often affect girls from a young age, which then in turn leads to low self-confidence.
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