Men; the stronger sex, the simple creatures...IF..

There is a gargantuan amount of media out there that influences our  lives. We express to friends how we "lived" off of our favorite family classics, and how we "can't live" without the newest movie or song that came out and touched our lives, and it's scary to think that the media has this much power to twist people's souls into behaving a certain way through example! Now I'm sure there is a lot of awareness about the media's version of the woman. From TV shows like Family guy and American Dad, where any mention of a woman is followed by sexist slurs and constant sexual fantasy, to shows like Mad Men where the woman is put into the worst situation possible and the "hero" of the story is a cheating drunk who behaves as if marriage is  for show, not love. Then of course there is the magazines telling us what is considered beautiful, how we women should be! The pictures and articles of these thin digitally altered shadows of women is how most men see women, and how they believe we should be. Now I could babble all day about the right of the women! How we're treated unfair, but I'm not here to preach about that, there's plenty of it that you could easily research. No, I'm here to talk about the effects of the media in my life. Now I grew up watching Disney, and I loved; like every other little girl, the stories of the princess and the prince and how hard the princess had it until she found her true love and lived happily ever after. I always dreamed of finding that special handsome someone who would fall in love with me instantly and sweep me off my feet. I dreamed of it so much that when ever I did happen to meet an attractive young fellow I would immediately start to day dream of his secret affections towards me, how he pined and yearned to be near! How naive I was to think that at the ages of 12, 13, 14, that after one glance, one hello, that if I was attracted to someone he would automatically see me and fall head over heels. My dad always told me " Now Kat, you're at that very special age, when boys and men seem like one, and they will appeal to you in certain ways. Well you will be right about that. Just remember, men are simple creatures. They want one thing from a girl, which is why you must be careful in your choices of who you date, who you make friends with, and even who you say hi to in the halls! The simplicity of men is all around you, and that's why fathers are here." Of course I didn't understand the whole meaning of that, and thought that "the simplicity of men" meant that they were easy to get to love you, which is exactly what I needed! And the one thing was obviously a wonderful girl, with smarts, and humor to take away to fall in love with. That, thanks to Disney was my idea of a perfect happily ever after. Little did I realize there is no happily ever afters, just a lifetime of tomorrows. There are ups and downs to relationships and no one had prepared me for that. When I began high school I was in a new town full of new people, and more exciting than ever, was the new boys. I had a hardcore school girl crush on the very first day, and spend the remainder of my freshman and some of my sophomore year waiting for him to notice me. Then came a boy who started to befriend me, I was intrigued, and thought "Maybe this is the boy for me!" well he wasn't, turns out he liked girls in general, and couldn't wait to touch and hug any girl who would say hi to him. I was crushed, but how quick the heart does wander when you're young! At last, a perfect man for me! He was handsome, charming ( in an immature high school boy way) and he made me laugh. I adored him. When at last I decided it was silly to just sit next to him, listen, but look only, I decided to tell him how I felt. Well before I could catch him alone I was torn down. "It's too bad about Kat," I heard. "She sure is funny, and sweet. A little firecracker for sure. But I can't have a butter face ruining my chances with Jordan! She's HOT!" Well it only took me two days to figure out that a butter face really meant "But her face" meaning I had a good looking body to those boys, but not a good looking face. I was devastated! I listened to those boys laugh at their clever joke, and how they slandered more girls in their class. And I thought, boys are simple, if you are hot like Jordan. Then they will do anything to please you, but a small butter faced nobody, now that's a different story. I spent the rest of my high school years denying any feelings towards boys and then even more time in collage. Sure I've dated boys, nice boys too. But I still can't understand where their simplicity that my dad talked about went! I watch Disney movies now, and I wish that the one struggling for love wasn't the beautiful princess, but the nameless look alike prince. The little merman, Cinder-Toby, Snow white and Chizzled. Now that I'm older I find I can be more sensible about a boy, until I start to like him. I met that boy I liked in high school, right after I started my second semester in collage. He called out to me friendly enough and we got to talking. I thought terrible things about him as I smiled, and when he left and I went to class I felt my wind was knocked from me. I realized I still had very strong feelings for him that were repressed! And to this day when I see him I can't help but smile a little, and silently curse Disney.