The movie ‘Mean Girls’ provides insights into the concept of belonging because throughout the film the director Mark Waters shows the journey of Cady Herring (Lindsay Lohan) trying to find where she belongs in the social ranking at her new high school. Her predilection to belong with the ‘popular groups’, this desire puts some of her very few friendships she has on hold and they slowly start to crumble. The film discusses how trying to belong does not always have a positive outcome and isn’t always a positive thing to achieve. In today’s society almost everyone is superficial; people are judged on their appearance, the brands of clothing they wear, weather they have the latest phone, laptop, the type of house they live in the area in which they live and if they have a high paying job. And if you don’t have all of these or most of these you are generally considered an outcast.
In America, it seems many teenagers are inclined to act disrespectful to one another. The saying that teenagers should respect one another seems to have disappeared or vanished. What has taken over and replaced this attitude on teenagers is disobedience and rudeness. Some may be influenced by their friends, or may be the lack of discipline from their parents. In result, lack of discipline from parents along with mimicking their friends’ attitudes toward one another exemplifies few factors that influences teen rudeness.
Such theories include that “boys need a competitive and confrontational learning environment, while girls can only succeed if they work cooperatively and are not placed under stress” (Sherwin). However, this theory can be proved wrong due to the fact that women cope better with stress than men do, which is one of the main reasons why women tend to outlive men (Barber). This theory also provides a clear example of how gender stereotypes are being forced into the minds of boys and girls in a school setting. If a school starts to separate boys and girls from each other due to such theories, girls will start to make excuses for their poor test scores, etc. by saying that they were “too stressed out” to do well on a homework assignment, test, quiz, etc.
Bullying- Boys vs. Girls Bullying has become more popular over the past years. The article “Girlfight” by Karen Fanning describes the ways boys and girls verbally bully, while the article “Culture of Cruelty” from Raising Cain, by Dan Kindlon explains the different ways boys bully and how they differ from the girls’ ways of bullying. While both boys and girls are bullied because they do not conform, girls tend to engage in a war of words while boys settle their disputes by physical acts of violence. Although it may seem that only girls are bullied because they do not conform, they are not alone.
Adolescents are three to four times more likely to see a sexual act on television or the internet. With so much sexual content in the media most of the effects are negative, and may influence teens to engage in unhealthy behavior. Some of the negative effects of the media is most teens may learn about sex. They can learn about sexual content from the media, and engage in behavior that is not appropriate. More than half of all teenagers will admit to learning about sex from some form of the media.
We know this is not true because women have done everything in this world that men have including dangerous adventure sports yet they considered to be lower than men .Their talents are not as recognized as men’s talents are and they are mostly looked upon as not being fit for the same jobs as men are. These issues are presented in the texts examined in this essay. The song “What it feels like for a Girl” by Madonna and the essay “Fifty one percent Minority” by Doris Anderson are about Gender Inequality and how women are treated in society. The song by Madonna describes the pressure women feel to conform to social norms of politeness and subservience and the essay by Doris Anderson is about discriminatory practises that are done against women in Canada. Anderson is also one of Canada’s leading advocates of women rights.
The following two lines and second stanza speak of puberty and what her class mates think of her. This is a classic case where a social circle has profound impact of how young people see themselves; not for who they are, but for what their friends think of them. Further irony comes as the magic of puberty is not all magical and the only thing that changes is a girl changing into a woman with thick ties and big fat nose. In the third stanza she begins her quest for acceptance; diet, exercise, smile and wheedle. This is not who she really is and soon the pretense wears away, “Her good nature wore out.” when the real façade revealed who she was, she removed that which people dislikes about her, her nose and her legs and eventually gave up living.
Ashley was so confused that the only thing she could think of to say was yes, when she should have said no! Ashley became their friend but she never got why they wanted to be her friend. The mean girls were totally the antithesis of her; they were really preppy and wore expensive name brand clothing, and Ashley was not preppy and did not have much money. Everyday Ashley wished she could just ascend to a higher stage in her life but she couldn’t. Both of Ashley’s parents were normally austere.
Likewise, teen girls often use exaggerated sexuality to resist outside control of their lives. Young women are being taught to flaunt their sexuality even if they don’t understand it, and they are told their body is their best asset. The girls take the fantasized models that they have seen in ads and overstate what they see because the models make their self esteem go down and teen girls want to be like those powerful models. The constant ads containing the sexualized female depictions perpetuate the
After long hours of research, these are not the major cases causing teens to become sexually active but factors as: peer pressure, exposure to rated media content; are rather the more intriguing cases that have teens wondering about their peers. So, why are teens sexually active at age 15? One factor that remains one of the most reoccurrence factors, would be peer pressure. According to the American Social Health Association, the biggest reason as to why teenagers get convinced into early sex activities is due to the fact that they think their peers are also having sex. In a study 89% of girls reported feeling pressured by boys to have sex, while 49% of boys reported feeling pressured by girls to have sex.