Thursday, June 20, 2013

What Pinterest says about us...

Like any red-blooded woman, I can kill a few hours at any given time on this modern wonder of the time-wasting world, but Pinterest alternatively leaves me bemused and disturbed.  I realise that clicking the 'Popular' category on your Pinterest feed is by no means a cut and dried way of analysing the state of popular culture and its values, but in a basic form, I think it can give you an indication of what's important to the pinning female masses.

Here's a quick summary of the world according to Pinterest:

* Get skinny.  Be skinny.  Beautiful people are skinny.  Skinny, skinny, skinny.  There is a magic formula to being skinny.  You just have to...  **insert any number of exercise regimes, tonics, diet fads or pictures of semi-naked skinny people in odd poses**

* Paint your nails in lots of colours and designs.  Because apparently fingernails are for looking at, and not for opening key rings, peeling sticky things and generally being useful appendages.  Who knew?

* Mason jars.  Enough said

* Recipes that contain nothing but 'just add...' ingredients are still classed as 'baking from scratch'.

* Men are stupid, untrustworthy and yet totally worth sacrificing massive amounts of time and energy to keep happy **insert endless sappy memes about heart-broken Daddy's Girls / the crucial importance of date nights etc**

The last one is really getting to me lately.  Women have spent generations fighting towards a world with equal opportunities for the sexes, and yet feel the need to tar all males with the 'thick and unreliable' brush.  I actually know very few men that fit either of these categories, and women are doing themselves a disservice if they wish to promote this stereotype.  It's telling girls that they can expect to be walked over by any male out there except her father.  It's telling boys that they don't have to own their behaviour.

What a crock.  I love my husband because he is human.  He works hard, respects others, is intelligent, and owns his actions.  Just as I do.  Stop the male bashing, because being a moron has no gender-bias.