When you think of a good female role model, the first person to come to your mind probably isn’t someone like Sonia Sotomayor, Condoleezza Rice or Michelle Obama. I bet that most of the people who read this aren’t even going know who two out of those three women are.
In this society, when a teenage girl thinks of someone who influences them, they say someone like Lady Gaga, Snooki, Nikki Minaj or Kim Kardashian. In fact, when I typed in “female role models for teenage girls” into Google, a blog came up. On this blog, every single person who posted said either a singer or an actress is their role model.
The type of role models that girls talk about tend to come from the world of TV with rich and famous celebrities, rather than a broader range of role models, like women who work in business, sports and other successful mediums.
Shows such as the MTV dramas “Skins” and “Jersey Shore” have been accused of normalizing and glamorizing sex, drinking and drugs. It doesn’t matter to girls, however. Girls glamourize the life of a reality TV star without a care in the world.
On the MTV show “Jersey Shore,” almost every episode someone gets arrested, drunk, high, has sex, and gets in a fight. It is sad that so many young girls look up to these stars who are only famous for their ability to be stupid.
On the show “Keeping up with the Kardashians,” we follow the oh so interesting and important lives of the Kardashian family. Girls idolize this show because they envy the Kardashian family’s ability to talk about and do pointless things: things such as getting five boob jobs, having sex, partying, drinking, and talking about pointless family “drama.”
These shows are horrible influences on teenage girls because of their twisted morals and glorified irresponsible behavior.
By idolizing certain singers, this is also true. Usually in music the focus is sex, drinking and drugs. In almost every modern pop song there are references to sex,drinking and drugs. The people who sing these songs such as Nikki Minaj, are automatically idolized along with the lyrics to their songs.
There has been a drastic change in the hopes and dreams in young teenage girls over the past decade or two. Most teen girls no longer have the ambition to become a doctor or find the cure to cancer. Their only dream in life is to become famous. They dont care how they do it either, they just want to be idolized.
What these girls don’t realize is that when they do become famous for doing something stupid they will be imitated by the next generation of young girls looking for fame. Girls should be exposed to a broader range of women, so that they can have aspirations and interests, and are encouraged to make the right choices in the future.
