OK, so I don’t know what it is with media, but when women get even an ounce of attention it is like they have to somehow give the credit to a man, or try to find a way to make the woman’s accomplishment almost meaningless.
Recently in the Olympics there has been a lot of female success. Katie Ledecky, The entirety of the women's gymnastics team, Simone Manuel, and Cory Cogdell are just a few of the women who are bringing home medals from Rio.
Katie Ledecky recently won a gold medal and beat a world record in her meet but was still put as a subtitle to Micheal Phelps silver metal win, in a newspaper article. Cory Cogdell won a bronze medal in shooting and the article headline read, “Wife of Bear’s lineman wins a bronze medal in Rio Olympics.” They pretty much should have said, “Her biggest accomplishment is becoming a wife because she married a famous football player, but oh, by the way she worked her entire life to become an Olympian.”
These women that are bringing home Olympic medals are representing other women. There is something amazing and beautiful when a country announces that they are sending their first woman to the Olympics. I wish that everybody could be represented equally without a second thought. Every deserving person who fights their way to the Olympics deserves to go. So, when those women are discredited for their triumphs it makes me angry. They have worked their whole life to get to where they are, and when they finally get there they are still put second to a man.
This is not the first example of sexism in media by any means. Society has placed women in a box, and they have this idea that women should be and act a certain way. If women are not super feminine it is wrong. We see it in all of the movies. A nobody loner girl gets a miracle makeover and then all of the sudden all of the boys want to be with her. One, that makes all of the people who are not girly and feminine feel ugly and worthless, and two, it's not realistic, so, stop. A woman is not defined by what she wears, the ways she speaks, or what she is into.
I remember going into high school thinking that I had to act a certain way as a girl because the people in my town would not like me. I realized something in those four years that I was in high school, and that was to stop wasting your time with people who live in a box. I have stopped listening to the true “definition of a woman,” because there is none. As a society, we have to stop defining people because anyone that differs will feel completely out of place. Start living the way you want to live, and stop focusing on what other people think. It sounds so cliché, but it is true. It is a waste of a life if all you care about is what people think.
