Micro-trends upholding gender roles

 -Rupkatha

Social media is nothing but a complex web of thousands of people, all living their lives and posting about it. It helps people stay connected, feel connected, and enter an endless spiral of posting and comparing. Through time, social media has changed its role in society. From a mere communication app, it has transformed into something where every minute detail of one’s life is recorded and shared with everyone to see. Well, it might seem that there’s no harm in that! You experience a beautiful moment, you record it, and you post it to keep it forever safely on the internet. As hypocritical as it may sound, the constant need to keep things digitalised has ruined life in many ways. The same old boomer arguments are true to some extent; “one should live a little, not through the phone screen, but vigorously through face-to-face interactions, afternoon playtime, and daily hangouts”. Even though it is not as simple as that, social media has definitely consumed a large part of our daily lives. Be it just scrolling through reels or stalking others, it works hard to take up a huge space in our brains. 

Still, social media as a place for connectivity is an important medium for knowledge. Be it knowledge about menstrual health, science, or a simple technological problem, social media is always there for you. Girls with no elder sister or mother receive advice that they genuinely need, from social media strangers, even though the confusion remains about whether they are trustworthy or not.

The main topic of this essay is upholding patriarchy and toxic gender roles through social media trends. In the past years, we have seen a gradual development of feminism, with people actually understanding the meaning of it, and the utilisation of social media to create a proper space to discuss it. Thus, we can say, social media brings change in mindsets, in lifestyles. But we have also seen the inertia people live in, and how social media contributes to that. 

The internet, as a part of the globalization process, acts as a space for communication between individuals from different linguistic, religious, and cultural backgrounds. But in the process, it also hugely leads to westernization and linguistic domination of the English language, which started from the colonial age. 

While Western culture is seen as modern, logical, and more developed in nature, it also includes its deeply patriarchal moral values and specific traditions that bring down whatever development it goes through. As we all know, the imperial rule in India brought about new ideas of modesty, new dressing patterns and culture. Even though we speak of our own country as backward, full of superstitions, and rightfully try to eradicate gender inequality and bias, we often fail to identify the same patterns in other cultures as we see them through our phone screens, created carefully through beautiful camera work and attractive captions.

The Western world focuses on a man proposing to a woman, and somehow, gives it ridiculously more importance than what’s normal in this age and time. Marriage is a mutual decision, and in this world, where marriage is not anymore about a man providing and a woman doing household chores, the concept of a man “man-ing up” through proposing feels irrelevant. Social media is flooded with this type of video, where a man proposes, and people comment: “that’s how I like my man”, “if he is not like this, I don’t want him”- as if, the whole idea of attractiveness in a man depends on his ability or willingness to conform to the existing gender norms. And when a single person does not follow it, that is, when he or she posts a video of a woman proposing, the world seems to have ended for the people in the comment box, who surprisingly act like it’s still the Middle Ages and any changes in the existing system will lead to punishment by the monarch. These concepts are also part of westernization and are often practised in our country as well. Hopefully, it remains a minor Western import. While the idea of a man taking ‘baarat' to a woman’s home is prevalent in India, it is more of a family thing, and as India modernizes, we may hope for marriage to become a mere legal tie between two people. Two people in a relationship are supposed to be two equal individuals, and while a relationship does have certain demands, it cannot be true that all women want to be surprised by an extravagant proposal, except if society creates this specific gender specific expectation, and has been doing so for years. And social media acts as an important, modern-day carrier of it.

The expectations for men in society change rapidly, from providing for the family from a young age, to an unrealistic idea of “princess treatment”. Even though these expectations are supposed to be rooted in kindness and love towards their partner, many have seen it as merely a duty. Gender inequality roots from these toxic gender roles, and the micro-trends help them survive. Specifically, some terms like “sidewalk rule”, related to the concept of modern-day chivalry, often undermine the normalcy of a hangout but rather develop a discrimination between the two people. These are also often designed and done entirely for social media. And these new words every week just keep creating new aspects to judge a person, about whether they are suitable to have a relationship with, instead of giving importance to the connection between the two people. 

In the world of social media, relationships have just become a set of rules and theories, often trends. While the real world still loves real connections, the dependence on social media for validation of a romantic relationship should be decreased. In real life, through gender socialization from childhood, girls are brought up to be kind and to be a motherly figure, whereas boys are often not given their fair share of education about kindness and empathy, rather they are taught to be strong and “manly”. Hence, in reality, we often see men not being able to fit the standards, and women not being treated the way they want. While some men will go “I spoil my girl because I want to”, the problem occurs when men do it to fit in the standards, or to fulfill the demands, while not exactly being a compassionate individual. That just feels like an act, and as we are talking about social media, it is often just posing to get posted as an ideal couple. 

Recently, another trend has also surfaced, which is so disgusting, in my opinion. It talks about the men being emotional in a relationship, and the women ridiculing them by offering them their lip balm. There are so many things wrong with this. The phrase “ok girllll do you want a lipbalm” is not really a girlhood phrase here, but rather it is being used to demean someone for showing emotions. Dissociation of emotions from masculinity is certainly not the way we should be going. Masculinity and femininity are social constructs that are supposed to be changing in the right way. Connecting emotions with weakness, and thus saying someone is less of a man, is a weird take. And also, considering lip balms are mainly used by women, and then linking it with being emotional, this trend is basically just promoting the whole “men don’t cry” stereotype. That is extremely outrageous and sad in this age. And this brings up the question, are we following just trends, not understanding their meanings? We are simply just scrolling past them, not speaking up, because silently, these gender roles are still normal in our minds, like a boy wearing lip balm, and a girl proposing brings discomfort to us.

Teenagers have always been under peer pressure, the pressure to belong in a group by acting out according to certain coded collective behavioural patterns. Here’s where social media plays its role. These coded collective behavioural patterns, that were more local in the past, have turned global nowadays. We constantly aim to become like the one we see on our phone screens, be it fashion trends ("clean girl aesthetic" as of now), or lifestyle tips. Almost all the boys of a certain age aim to be a part of some sort of digital manosphere and thereby get trained in the same kind of toxic masculinity. Girls too have to fit in a global parameter of beauty and modesty that can hardly be challenged by local practises. The odd one, the misfit often apprehends trolling and bullying, which, again, is more mercilessly scathing in the digital world, than it is in the real world. Social impositions regarding gender specific roles, expectations and unrealistic toxic standards are done so stealthily and gradually in real life and in social media, that almost everyone has become victims and unknowingly a carrier of it.