As an Odyssey writer for over a year and a reader for a little longer than that, I read trending articles a lot more critically than I would’ve before. Some articles I can relate to and read critically multiple times are the one discussing the lives of college students who get more or less financial help with expenses, for college and personal.
One article that started a lot of controversy was one where the author referred to herself as “spoiled” and is demand to stop shaming her for it. I think what started this controversy is the wording of the title and some of the article.
“Spoiled” has a negative connotation but the denotation is “privileged.” In this aspect its referring to the fact that the author has some of her expenses taken care of by her parents. She has less to worry about and more time to focus on school and have more of a social life. There isn’t anything wrong with what she described, but plenty to do with the way it’s worded. The way it’s worded resulted in a lot of backlash in multiple response articles referring to her as ditzy, bad in school, unsuccessful, not driven and rude. The author then defended herself and I agreed because I have almost the same privilege she has and understand her overall message in her initial article. But the way it was worded is what annoyed me.
I already wrote an article about why “stop shaming” articles are annoying. This is one of them that I didn’t dislike as much because I critically saw the actual meaning: having financial support from parents in college doesn’t make someone ditzy or a bad person. I still think the author is playing the victim by the way the title is worded. If the title didn’t say “stop shaming” a lot of the negativity would be absent, and eliminating the word “spoiled” would help even more.
What the author is trying to say is privileged college students don’t deserve to be stereotyped and that is not how to understand someone’s character. Its true: not all privileged students are spoiled rotten, ditzy and not driven to achieve. We simply have parents who want to continue providing for us so we can focus on school, sometimes knowing we need it because of our abilities. Not because we are spoiled, entitled princesses/princes. This doesn’t mean we don’t or can’t work- work isn’t always about the money, it’s also about experience, networking and lifelong friendships. Every job I had, I got on my own.
Another article that started a controversy was someone who has it the other way from the first author I discussed. She wrote about how she’s been working since she was sixteen, didn’t have as much of a social life and only gets a couple things covered by her parents. She assumes that the students who have it like the first author are spoiled and discusses how they can’t put “spoiled” on their resume. The responses described what I described- privileged, not spoiled. I agreed a lot more with the responses because they come from privileged students describing that hard work is in fact present with the privileged lifestyle.
I for one am fed up with the controversial articles like this, about lifestyles regarding privilege or lack thereof. Some start with describing a lifestyle that they live and then recieve backlash from those who don’t share it, and the others start by ridiculing the lifestyle they don’t live and the recieve backlash from those who do live it. I have taken a stance in this controversy because I want to support the authors who describe the lifestyle correctly. And that is why I was motivated to write this article, to support them. Writing an article to throw shade at someone with a lifestyle that they don’t live themselves is being a bully, and trying to justify the lifestyle someone does live to people who don’t seem to try to understand is playing the victim.
Another aspect that inspired to finally write this article is an old friend. Old friend means she lost her place in my life, and her place in the friend group. She started being so rude about us being privileged because she was going through hard times and lost some of her privilege. My friends tried sympathizing for her despite how rude she was but I had it after one or two comments. It is never okay to tear down your friends to feel superior, so being as thick skinned as I got to be, I didn’t allow it. I made sure she knew everyone was getting tired of her and her bad attitude toward our lifestyle differences and the she wasn’t welcome unless that changed. It didn’t, so she found another friend group and significant other who kept her around much longer than we did, good for her. I felt bad that she was going through what she was going through but the way she used us for support was wrong and will never be justified. If you’re going to be this kind of person, think about how your attitude affects everyone around you and your ability to keep relationships. Its hard when you’re being a bully by making everyone feel bad for their blessings, which is what some of the previously mentioned articles are about.
This isn’t to say no privileged students aren’t actually spoiled, because there are bad apples in every bunch. Those bad apples don’t represent the entire bunch. All you can do is avoid the bad apples as much you can. The main idea of my article is that privileged doesn’t mean spoiled and someone’s privilege isn’t the way to judge someone’s character. Because a lot of us privileged students keep our privilege a secret due to those kind of quick judgements. It isn’t fair by any means and will not change quickly, unfortunately. All we can do is passionately fight it through articles like this.
