Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Can't You Say You Believe in Me

A double standard refers to the treatment of one classification of people differently than other groups of people. - wikipedia

Imagine a married 45 year old man and father of two young children. His wife stays at home and raises the kids. The man is afforded all the freedom anyone could ask for. He comes home late, attends 'special' functions, all in the name of bettering his career and is never questioned by his wife.

One day the man announces he wants a divorce.

The woman is crushed. She asks about his plans for the children. "I'll get them a nanny" he says. The man becomes enraged when his wife tells him that she is not leaving her children or their home. The man then cuts off all financial support. The credit cards that the wife used to pay for food, home improvement items, activities for the children, medical bills for the family's pet are now solely her responsibility.

The husband becomes hostile. He starts to stay out later. He makes private phone calls. He makes snide comments about his wife in front of his children. He lies to friends and family in an attempt to alienate wife. He does everything to try to bully his wife out of her home and her rights.

So here's my question, is this man a hero or should he be tied to a stake?

I stared thinking about double standards as I was writing a piece about how Sex in the City is responsible for the corruption of our society. My struggle with this hypothesis is that 1. I believe that art in any form has a right to be and 2. It's not the art that is to be blamed but instead the masses and how they are influenced by it. Just because a 14 year robs a liquor store doesn't mean that his video games drove him to committing the crime. But we blame Grand Theft Auto because we are too weak as guardians to shoulder the responsibility.

But I digress...again.

The premise of Sex in the City is how a single woman and her 3 friends struggle through romantic relationships looking for that perfect man. The double standard comes into effect when we take a look as how the men of this show are portrayed. More often the not these men are chauvinistic womanizers who lack compassion and are often times just plain dumb. And it's always the mans fault when these women wake up with that weeks idiot in her bed as our heroine asks herself "why did I do that"

Ask yourselves, if this show were about four guys who go around using women like tissues then whining about they can't find true love, would we tune in every week or would this show be condemned as exploitation.

Give me one example of one show that portrays women as disposable, bungling idiots because I can give you at least 5 examples of shows that do this exact same thing to men.

And the thing that bothers me the most is how the viewers of this show grabs a cup, chugs down the poisoned Kool Aid and then gleefully asks for seconds. As the main character cheats on the one true good man in her life we are asked to feel sorry for her because....hmmmm, why should we feel sorry for her again? Here's your Kool Aid.

Sorry, this topic kinda bleeds into another topic that I wanted to address at some point. I originally used a bunch of these statements to support my position about how today's media is making it easy for society to reason away our unethical behavior. I may post that at sometime in the future. Who knows.

4 more days till the weekend everyone. Hang in there

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gotta agree in that I don't like Sex In The City. I don't like the women in it, and I don't like the fact that it portrays them as sex greedy people in need of men. Their lives revolve around men, even though they're meant to be strong, independent women.

Bugs the hell out of me. That show is just wrong, in many ways.

MDStayathomefather said...

The problem I have with it (well not with the show as there always has and always will be crap on tv) is that it really does try to justify itself in making the women seem....justifiable.

All I know is that I expect to see a sharp rise in the divorce rate after this trash hits the screens.

hollywood3808 said...

I <3 Sex in the City. Everyone needs a little mindless fluff!