There have always been certain types of trends on social media, whether this be certain types of challenges, dances or fashion and product design. However, even just looking a little deeper under the surface of said trend, you’ll notice a pattern with almost any trend that becomes “cringe” or “weird;” it’ll always somehow be adjacent to anything girls (specifically teenage girls) find interest in.
It’ll always be the same pattern: a topic becomes trending and seen as cool, teenage girls will pick it up and start doing it, and then all of a sudden people will find any reason to hate on it.
You can find this with older and newer examples. For example, there was a period of time where makeup was seen as “ugly” or “fake” even by girls themselves. Praising yourself for “not wearing makeup” became the way to be cool and different. As of today, makeup has seen a new light of sorts, where girls and practically all genders have seen the art and beauty in makeup. However, the point being that because makeup is mostly catered to women, such a product was disgraced, until men started picking it up more and it regained a new light. Or for example, games such as Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, Minecraft or any other game with a calm atmosphere were extremely popular, especially around 2020. All of a sudden though, you had this surgance of people trying to hate on all those games, calling people who played them “not real gamers” or even just calling the game itself boring and terrible. All of course, simply for being played by mostly girls.
And the thing is that there’s no real argument to suggest that if both makeup and the mentioned games had mostly men within their audience, that they wouldn’t be attacked and demonized in the same way. Simply the only difference is that when girls do or use something more than men, it’s seen as less than.
This then goes deeper and more specific when it comes to audiences composed mostly teenage girls. Makeup can also be used in this example, though I feel as if also appropriate to bring up fandoms within this. The most prominent and widespread example I can think of this is with the Twilight series.
As much as I personally dislike the Twilight series for its poor writing and poor plot and poor… well everything in general, there has never once been a series that has catered to a male audience veneered in the same way. For the most part, you’ll hear people say “It was funny to watch how bad it was.” Yet, for some reason, there is unrelentless criticism towards Twilight for seemingly just as bad content as others. As many have pointed out before, it most likely stems from the fact that Twilight was picked up by teenage girls, who were the main audience. Simply put once again, if Twilight had a male centered audience, it wouldn’t be as infamous as it is now.
But what repercussions does this have for girls? Well, it sends a clear message, “Your opinion and interest matter less.” Either being made fun of for your interests, or trying to sneak your way into male centered spaces, enjoy it quietly, and hope other girls “don’t try” to join as well.
The danger of this being of course, is that when a group of people feels isolated and “different” from the rest, then they start to lash out and criticize the world around them more. While this is justified, now more people will start to see that group as weird, feeling and telling others that their concerns aren’t valid, further creating division.
It’s more important than even when looking at a niche topic such as this one, with such a large group affected, that we recognize the problem in the first place. We must start letting teenage girls simply be teenage girls. There’s nothing wrong with others liking something you find weird, but what isn’t okay, is targeting people simply because they like it. Sometimes, people can and just need to mind their business.
