the same, she would be labeled a slut or a whore for it. This phenomenon was proven in an anonymous survey I took among my peers. The question with responses that stuck out the most to me was, “If you found out a girl you know had sex, would you think badly of her?” Almost all the answers were yes. Ironically a lot of girls get dumped for not having sex with their boyfriends. So basically society thinks all girls should be virgins, but they get the same amount of ridicule if they don’t have sex. It just doesn’t make sense why the world works that way.
And It doesn’t stop there. Adults are no different from teens. They experience the effects of double standards as well. One example being abuse in relationships. When a man abuses his girlfriend or wife, it is taken extremely serious as it should be. When the roles get switch-ed around, however, and it's the women doing the abusive acts, it's not taken serious at all in most cases.
Often times it is even made out to be a joke or played up for laughs. The reasoning behind this is that no woman is strong enough to harm a man, so any man weak enough to be harmed by a woman isn't a real man. Double standards will be with us no matter what age we are.
We can’t control how the world works. The only thing we can control is how we respond to whatever comes our way. Don’t let stereotypes run your life. Don’t think you have to act a certain way for other people. Lastly, but most importantly, just be yourself!
"society thinks all girls should be virgins, but they get the same amount of ridicule if they don’t have sex."
Photography by Svjetlana Mlinarevic
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