What do Twilight, teenagers, Taylor Swift, fat, Justin Beiber, and the government have in common?
We hate them all.
Sound like a bold statement? It is. If I'm completely truthful, I don't hate absolutely anything on that list, but when I'm around a group of people, I instinctly pretend to. That's because society has decided that these things are just "terrible" and I, in turn, must comply to agree.
This list is definitely not exhaustive. There are so many things that are "uncool" to like anymore, I try to keep my mouth shut, especially with people I don't know very well. But this is a blog. So I guess I'm gonna say what I want.
For my Women in Pop Culture class (yes it's a real class), we are currently reading the book Twilight to discuss gender roles in literature (particularly adolescent in this case). Today we came in to class to discuss it and I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of sheer hatred. It was as if this book was the cause of everything wrong in the world. Girls said they "would never let their children read it" or "it could have been written by a fourth grader."
The thing is, I remember, in high school, when this book suddenly changed from "wonderful" to "awful." It wasn't until movies started coming out and everyone wanted to be a critic. I spoke up in class and said that I knew kids who started reading because they loved this book. And isn't it good to have them reading something, even if it isn't regarded as "high literature" or "thought-provoking themes"? The backlash was brutal. I was evidently supporting abusive relationships and enabling a unintelligent future generation.
I'm not saying I'm upset by this argument today, although it may sound like it. Truhtfully, I may not have said it as eloquently in class as I wrote on here, because my ideas never come out like I want them to in class discussions. Mostly I was just intrigued by what I want to call the "hipster" phenomenon. The idea that things that become very mainstream often also become extremely hated. I had the examples of Taylor Swift and Justin Beiber above, singers who many of my friends "hate" despite the fact that they buy, or at least listen to, some of their music.
Some of my other examples weren't in this category, but they are still heavily influenced by pop culture and what everyone else is saying. Our government is continually criticized and so it becomes natural for us to only think of its negative aspects. The teenagers or young people of society have been criticized for being a lazy or rebellious or spoiled for generations. Recently I have seen that my own generation have decided to continue with this tradition of negative attitude for the generations below us. Fat is something instantly terrible and we are buying "low-fat" or "low-carb" products now more than ever, because that's the thing to do. We are all aiming toward the ideal body image, always hating what we have.
I know I just covered a lot of topics but I just wanted to write out this idea of hatred without much basis or support. Maybe we don't really "hate" everything that we think we do. I, at least, don't want to. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Hate is too great a burden to bear."
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