Can Actually Be Harmful To Their Health By Tara Culp-Prevailing Society

Virginia Woolf once said, "As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking." What she meant by this is that women are far too often put down for thinking of anyone but the “man” in her life. Before modern civilization, women were told that they couldn’t think for themselves or get an education, that they needed to stay in the shadows while men take all the glory. Though the standards of women have greatly changed, especially for women who live in the United States, women are still seen as things that they are not. According to society, women are weak, promiscuous, and passive. People today see women as weak. In the article “Forcing Kids to Stick to Gender Roles Can Actually Be Harmful to Their Health” Tara Culp-Ressler …show more content…
In the short story “Girl”, Jamaica Kincaid writes, “on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming...this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming...this is how to behave in the presence of men you don’t know very well, and this way they won’t recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming;” In this excerpt, a mother is telling her daughter, Kincaid, what she should do and how she should act in certain situations. In other words, she is informing her how to survive as a woman in their town. But, while teaching her daughter, she also verbally abuses her. The mother has no proof of Kincaid 's alleged promiscuity, but throughout the story she comments on how Kincaid is, in her words, “a slut.” If a man did any of the things that the author’s mother warned her about, he would be congratulated. This proves that society has a double standard for women, because they would be considered immoral for the same things men are congratulated …show more content…
“Easy A”, a modern twist on the novel, “A Scarlet Letter”, is about how a teenage girl, Olive, allows other boys at her high school to say that they slept with her in exchange for money or gift cards. When the boys tell everyone at school what “went down”, they often rise in social status and more girls want to date them. But, when Olive says to have slept with all those boys, people shame her and stay away from her. When I first watched this movie, I of course laughed at all the humor that the movie so seamlessly ties in. But, the more I watched it, the more unsettling it became for me. Why was Olive outcasted for doing the same things (even though she was just pretending) boys do on a day to day basis? To me, it didn’t seem fair at