Pop Culture: Gender

Pop culture is everywhere and it affects the lives of Americans every day. Pop culture trends change outlooks on how we dress, the way we walk and talk, how we spend our money, and how we think about ourselves. This is especially seen in the American teenage population. Since teens are exposed to a wide variety of this “pop culture” at a very young age, they can show drastic changes in the way they view the world, as well as themselves, in a very short period of time. This can be positive or negative. Shows like Jersey shore, 16 and pregnant, and Teen Mom, as we can all judge, have had mostly negative effects on our nation’s youth, depicting women as nagging, over-emotional “grenades”, that have no education and cannot support themselves. These MTV shows are so obviously stereotypical, but other shows on TV can have the same negative effects, some that you would never think to be so demeaning to woman. I believe that Americas Next Top Model, hosted by former, very successful model Tyra Banks, has a negative effect on teenagers. The show portrays women as being imperfect who can only achieve their dreams by withstanding a number of rigorous tests and challenges, which can either lead to their elimination from the show that week or their elimination from the show a week later. For anyone who has seen ANTM, Tyra Banks always has melodramatic talks with the girls on the show about how important it is to be yourself, and to express yourself, and to never let anyone put you down or tell you that you aren’t good enough. This is comical, because Tyra’s speeches usually lie before the elimination part of the show, where Banks and the rest of the judges proceed to call the girls out on every imperfection they have, and explain to them how they can “improve” themselves for the better (or so they won’t get kicked off the show). The judges will then make rude jokes about the girls once they all have left the room for evaluation. Yes, sometimes the remarks made from Miss. J. Alexander are quite hilarious, but no one ever stops to think about how the girls feel about these critics and comments made.  American Next Top Model is unfair, spiritually draining, and demeans women in a non-direct way (compared to a show like “Jersey Shore”).  The girls on the show get so stressed out, that by the time their “elimination” comes around, some of them are so drained mentally and spiritually that they volunteer to be eliminated or they walk out from the show. This was seen in the cycle 18 elimination of the “British Invasion” version of ANTM in 2012. The two girls in the “bottom two” walked up to Tyra, preparing themselves for another one of her over-emotional pep talks that usually turned out to be one big contradiction. After being told that she was “still in the running for being Americas Next Top Model, Alisha White blurts out, “I can’t stay.” She then goes onto say that she would rather walk away from the show to “get her spirit back, and to feel like Alisha again.” This just proves that the show is so stressful for some of the girls that it completely drains them of their former selves. Americas Next Top Model debases woman and should be seen in a different light. This show is giving off a message that nobody is good enough, and that your flaws and mistakes can lead to the vanishing of your dreams. Aspiring models should watch this show for an example of how the modeling industry is. What’s worse is that this show isn’t even a full representation of how grueling and terrifying the modeling industry actually is. I have a lot of respect for the girls who put themselves out there on a daily basis to be picked for Americas Next Top Model, and I hope that one day ANTM can be exposed for how it really depicts women.