Ever since I was a little girl, I can remember being told the misconception that "when a boy is mean to you, it means he likes you." My dad, grandpa, and multiple other men have told me that in my life. While the men who said this did not have bad intentions, that phrase is actually very harmful to a young girl who cannot decipher the difference between playfully teasing and abuse or control what the "mean" can turn into. When boys would bully me when I was younger, I believed that it was because I made them nervous and they actually thought I was cute. So when I began to take it without retaliation, the worse and more cruel it got, because I let it happen.
Now that I am grown up, I see how stupidly wrong that phrase is, but I see it subconsciously intertwined with thoughts that girls have looking for boys now that we are old enough to have actual boyfriends. As a girl who fell for it herself, it has opened my eyes to how wrong that statement is. Females are being taught to romanticize being treated poorly by males. Girls are taught to fall for the "bad boy" and that the "nice guys" finish last and aren't boyfriend material.
Well I don't want a bad boy.
While the world we live in is basically encouraging young girls to allow boys to pick on them, it is also encouraging older boys to control and manipulate older girls.
I am not saying all of the boys who playfully tease people as kids turn into abusers or bullies, do not get me wrong. I am addressing the mindset it can put young girls in.
These actions and phrases negatively affect both boys and girls. We encourage girls to be treated as objects and to dress themselves up like Christmas trees just to get a boy to look at them, just for them to tease her because of immaturity and the rough nature of most young boys. In a more adult situation, society is also promoting girls to be treated less than perfect by books about "Daddy Dom" relationships like in "Fifty Shades of Grey." It promotes sexual, physical, and emotional abuse by romanticizing a younger woman being a sex slave, following the man's every order (her diet, exercise, and even birth control regime) and being punished when she does not satisfy him in the way that he wants.
I am not talking bad about the book, I personally like it. But more easily impressionable younger girls and boys could take it to the unhealthy extreme and not see it as a fictional book.
Instead of telling young girls that boys pick on them because they like them, we should tell girls how a boy should treat them. We have to tell girls who don't know their way yet that when a guy likes a girl he will treat her with respect. So even if boys do "tease girls because they like them," maybe we should be teaching boys how to treat girls like ladies.
We have to tell young boys that being mean to girls because they like them is wrong and that they should treat them kindly and with respect. Instead of teaching our sons that girls are objects, we must teach them that girls are treasures of great value. We need to teach our sons that "no" means no, no matter what she is wearing, how flirty she is, or how much she has drank. We must make it clear to our young boys that the day they lay their hands on a young woman is the day they stop being men. We must teach our sons that being mean to a girl is not the way to show her affection.