Hello, loyal followers (all ten of you)! I'm working on a new long post, I promise- it will be an investigation of fandoms and their impact on both the fans themselves and the artists on the receiving end of those fandoms...a prelude to a podcast I'm hoping to start soon. More on that later (hopefully). Also I might join Twitter? Also I might keep obsessively sharing my last long post (the purity letter one) until it goes viral?
In the meantime, here is a mini-post to tide you all over....I know you've all been anxiously awaiting a new post (lol). But in all seriousness, I am trying to hold myself more accountable and keep my posts consistent, and a mini-post is better than no post at all!
I don't know how it popped into my head, but I started thinking about the phrase "you get what you get and you don't throw a fit." I can't count all the times I heard this phrase growing up, mostly from teachers, but also occasionally from family members. And then, while this nagging sing-song rhyme still ran through my head on repeat, I stumbled upon some Facebook list, one of those posts like "10 Ways to Be an Adult" or something like that, on which the first item listed was: "Life isn't fair. Get used to it."
When we're little, phrases like this are used to quiet us when we whine over meaningless things, like getting a slightly smaller half of a cookie. But through seemingly small occurrences and lessons, children learn how to operate in the world- and do we every stop to think of the implications of some our so-called "harmless" sayings?
It reminds me of the B/T faculty's excuse for why they told their students to lose weight- "it's not us," they said, "it's just a hard reality of the industry." But "hard industry realities" (read: injustices rooted in gender-based prejudice) only stay hard industry realities if everyone involved in that industry continue to play by those rules. Harmful societal standards will never change unless someone chooses to challenge them. Injustice will never end unless someone throws a fit.
So yes, let's continue teaching children not to be entitled. Let's continue teaching children that they will not always get whatever they want, especially if they haven't worked for it. But let's not teach our children to blindly accept whatever they "get," and that "life is not fair." Because life should be fair. It may not be realistic, but it is an ideal that is worth striving for. Human beings can and should be agents of positive change.
The end.
