Douglas’ reference to Cosmopolitan in her discussion of Bridget Jones’s Diary
inspired me to go on www.cosmopolian.com to check out what
kind of articles have been written lately. I just so happened to come across an article called “Are You
Dating Up or Down?” (http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/dating-advice/how-to-know-date-the-right-guy?click=cos_new). This article struck me as
particularly relevant to our last class discussion about how we frequently see
unattractive men getting with comparably much more attractive women. The key question the article asks is to
what extent do looks play a role in a relationship? According to Cosmo’s “expert”, there are pros and cons to
dating up and to dating down. If a
woman dates up, the pro is that she is apparently more likely to keep up with
her appearance to stay on par with her hubby. However, a woman who dates up is also susceptible to
becoming jealous and insecure about the relationship. Dating down, on the other hand, has its own pros and
cons. The pro for a woman dating
down is that she may finally be able to find an emotional connection with the
average looking guy.
Unfortunately, regardless of an emotional connection, a woman may feel
as if she is just settling for a guy that doesn’t quite meet her
standards. Overall, I don’t agree
with many aspects of this article and I find it to be superficially degrading
to both men and women. That said,
it is interesting to read after reading Douglas because it basically tells
women what their interior monologue should be when it comes to their
relationship.
I think Douglas makes an interesting point about women
speaking their interior monologues in Clueless or Bridget Jones Diary,
but I also think that she condemns women too harshly who may actually have
those girlie, more feminine monologues.
The media has definitely taken girliness to the extreme, but is it such
a bad thing for those women to exist?
In order to address contemporary feminism, we should be open to the
broad spectrum of interior monologues from women. I don’t necessarily buy the argument that the girly-girl
woman is a new cultural phenomenon.
Rather, I believe that the girly-girl has always had a place in history,
with or without the media and Cosmopolitan.
I think Emily's assessment of the obvious double standard in terms of gender equality is very accurate. I, myself, have noticed that throughout pop culture and contemporary media, there exists the pervasive idea that many men are able to land a so-called "ten" with ease, whereas it is more socially improbable that a woman could date much farther above her "standard strata." I read a similar article in the print version of the magazine, which more or less proved that we rarely see evidence of "dating up" for females in the media, while we see numerous examples of men doing the same exact thing.
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