dear journal: sweet meme or beautiful nightmare?
Dear Journal,
Let’s look at the USA Today poll again…
For all ten categories except for “Having/Not Having a Tattoo,” woman expressed higher percentages than men, thus indicating that they place a higher judgement on each factor. This ultimately reveals that based on this study, women do hold higher standards to men then men hold to women. The categories with the greatest discrepancy between men’s and women’s judgment were the categories that focused on physical appearance (opposed to intelligence or materialistic items) with women dominating with the higher percentages.
And that’s why the “get you a man who can do both” memes where so well-received by women on social media. After digging through Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms, the number of “get you a man” memes greatly exceeded the number of of “get you a girl” memes, particularly ones that conveyed a more serious, literal tones. When heterosexual women viewed these “get you a man” memes, they registered both the physical attractiveness of dapper and street style as well as the attractiveness of the personalities and materialism associated with those particular styles. When heterosexual men viewed the “get you a girl” memes, many experienced a difficult time connecting with the memes because they merely just focus on physical beauty. It’s no wonder, because studies reveal that physical beauty only factors in one percent, making it the least important factor that guys consider when finding a suitable mate.
The “get you a girl” memes simply had less depth than the “get you a man” memes. It’s a matter of representing physical beauty, personality, and materialism versus merely just physical beauty. As we see with the memes above, more times that not the “get you a girl” memes evoked a facetious or humorous tone and the “get you a guy” memes evoked a more literal, serious tone.
No matter if the meme is targeting outer beauty or inner beauty, celebrities or commoners, males or females, heterosexuals or homosexuals, they all share one distinct message: You can’t be yourself.
Since I conform to more of a feminine style, dressing primarily in skirts and dresses, does that make me unattractive if I don’t adopt a more athletic style too?
Until next time, sweet memes & sleep tight,
Lexie