So today in class I was listening to my favorite musical: Wicked. I was listening to the song "Popular" and I've never really thought about it, but the song is basically saying to young women that you have to be good looking and outgoing and be good at sports and so on... just like Glinda. Here are some of the lyrics:
You're gonna be popular!
I'll teach you the proper poise,
When you talk to boys,
Little ways to flirt and flounce,
ooh!
I'll show you what shoes to wear!
How to fix your hair!
Everything that really counts to be...
I'll help you be popular!
You'll hang with the right cohorts,
You'll be good at sports,
Know the slang you've got to know.
So let's start,
'Cause you've got an awfully long way to go!
I just feel like this is incorrect: young women should be whomever they wish to be. Girls don't have to talk to boys, do their hair pretty, know the "slang" and all the other "requirements." I still love this song, but my eyes have been opened in a sense. Elphaba, the green witch, should express herself however she wants.
Presumably, it was being forced to conform that made her "wicked" (never seen the show, just guessing). This is clearly a metaphor of how students who are suppressed in their desires and likes are embittered at the system for not accepting them for who they are.
ReplyDeleteI see that nowadays the tolerance level for difference is increasing in some places, but increasing in others. As Kronzer said, society gets more tolerant over time, but some groups will still continue to ever-more-stubbornly hold on to their "values".
People should be able to choose who they want to be and not be restricted to gender roles based on the ideology portrayed by the media and reflected by society. We shouldn't put down differences but rather embrace them (easier said than done). As one kind Lady once asserted, some people are just "born this way". See what I did there :P?