[Excelsior]

(11-03-2012 10:57 PM)teh_skeeze Wrote:  

My best friend and I were talking a few months ago about how it seems that the girls in the up and coming generation seem to be much more feminine than our counterparts (he's 26 and I'm 29). Paradox of choice anyone?

I honestly think that we're seeing a practical cultural pushback. Millenial girls were too young to see or be a part of the fight that their mothers and grandmothers took part in for "liberation" (kicking off the sexual revolution).

While they've benefited from that revolution somewhat, they've also seen the downsides-the spinsters and other assorted harpies we talk about who help to make feminism a dirty word are their mothers, aunts, etc. They've seen where these women end up, and they're not sure they want to go there (though the whole sex and the city fantasy still appeals to them).

They've also seen the bitchmade men produced within the last 30-40 years as a result of the efforts their mothers/grandmothers/aunts made. They've spent a lifetime watching these men getting in touch with their "sensitive side" and placing them on a pedestal simply because they have vaginas. Instead of settling for these "nice" dudes (the kind the older feminist generation assumed would make things better), they've rightfully friendzoned them and started fantasizing about Christian Grey, immortal un-dead bloodsuckers/flesh-eaters, and ruthless criminals on bikes, among other similar things.

Women are more practical than we sometimes give them credit for. Any pushback you're seeing today (which I contend is happening, as our anecdotes, Gaga's words and other elements of our popular culture seem to show) is simply the result of women acquiescing to their own biology. Their mothers thought they could burn a few bras, spout a few whimsical/fantastical truths and get around their own DNA. Their daughters (who are not boomers and have grown up in a much less ideal time with less room for fantasy/error) are realizing that this won't work, and they're just coming to terms with that...slowly.