We always talk about how women have had to go through so much oppression to even survive in a patriarchal world like ours. But even though they seem to have it all, some things just don’t seem to sit well with me. 
It may not seem like it’s a huge deal, but I feel like it is. Especially when we have so many unnecessary stereotypes set for them. Not only is that troublesome, it could also harm them. But we’d never know. Do you want to know? Keep reading to find out!

What You Gonna Do When They Entangle With You?

Our favourite bad boy was on the news lately, and no, it wasn’t for the new movie. It was the entanglement his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, found herself in that broke the internet. 

When August Alsina first talked about this issue, it almost seemed like a bad joke and a publicity stunt at best. And with no response from the Smith’s, many people seemed to believe that Alsina was lying for clout. However, Jada soon found herself in the eye of the storm due to the speculation, her show, and the need to clear the air. 

What transpired next shattered many people’s hopes and beliefs. Not really, but for the sake of being extra, we will assume that it did. Jada and Will decided to clear the air on her show, the Red Table Talk. Even though the episode was quite emotional, especially with a teary-eyed Will, the video gave birth to various entanglement jokes. 

Not only did we see a bunch of memes made with a screengrab of Smith’s sad face, but we also saw a lot of comparisons made from when Will showed Jada off at an award show. People even started bringing in their kids Jaden and Willow into it. The most recent one happened to be on a video Will recently posted to his Instagram. While Smith might have a thing or two for humour, he wasn’t all about it when the subject happened to be his marriage. And to take the meme even further, or to take a dig at his ex, Alsina decided to release a new song called “Entanglement”.

Rise Above This

A month ago, I talked about a certain situation in “Never Too Late” regarding mental health. But despite being thrown into the deep end, the conversation only lasted for a bit, and then snowballed into a conspiracy that still remains just that.

So why am I talking about it right now?

Since the whole entanglement situation broke out, the worst possible outcome has been Will Smith becoming a meme. So why is his mental health not thought about? With so many people interfering and discussing his life out on the internet, pictures of him teary-eyed showing up, people were still talking about him after an Instagram live he did days after the Red Table Talk”.

While I don’t want to make a lot of assumptions, this is where things start to get blurry. I’ve always heard people say that celebrities give up their right to privacy as soon as they enter the industry. But how does that allow us to make assumptions about someone’s life, without any idea about what’s going on in their life?

I mean if you’re looking for another recent example, then look no further than Kanye West. We’ve all known Kanye to be erratic, brash, and just Kanye West. But what we didn’t know until 2018 was that Kanye is bipolar. In an appearance on the Letterman show last year, Kanye confirmed that he was diagnosed in 2016 but is in a better place. 

While West hasn’t been the only celebrity diagnosed with it, he has been the most significant one with public episodes. His most recent one being at a recent presidential bid for his upcoming US 2020 elections with a campaign rally in Charleston, South Carolina. We see him wearing a bulletproof vest and 2020 shaved in the back of his head! The event then took a turn when West made the shocking revelation of telling his then-girlfriend Kim Kardashian to abort their child, North. Kanye further talks about it while breaking down on the stage, explaining how the rest of their conversation went. 

The rapper further talked about what’s going on in his head by tweeting about it. But not only was his twitter rant concerning, but it also caught on a lot of attention because of its content. While he did end up deleting most of his tweets, the internet knew what he’d said, and weren’t going to let go of it that easily. Days after his revelation, Kim Kardashian West accepts that he has bipolar disorder. And she asked the media and public to give them compassion and empathy so that they can get through this.

While most of the reaction towards his behaviour has been sympathetic, not everyone feels that way towards Kanye. But here’s the thing, our behaviour as a society towards Kanye or bipolar disorder really shows how seriously we take mental health. And while it is wrong of me to categorize all of us in that category, it isn’t that far from the truth. Most of society doesn’t even consider mental health to be a reality, let alone talk about it.

I’m Sexy And I Know It

I really don’t mean to be tone-deaf or plain ignorant, but objectification is wrong regardless of the sex of the victim. 

While women have had to deal with objectification since forever, I’d started noticing a recent pattern in the trashy content Buzzfeed makes. Hey, I have nothing against thirst tweets, I enjoy reading some of it. However, I found out somewhere around last year about Buzzfeed’s Thirst tweet videos. I haven’t watched every single one of them, but I’ve watched a few. And even though some of them aren’t as bad or raunchy, some of them might make the sleaziest of people blush. 

With the number of videos they’ve made, they’ve even gone ahead and created a playlist of it. Again, I’d probably make some of these comments as a joke, but I realise that I wouldn’t be weirded out by it because of my gender. But if a guy ended up saying the same shit to me, ya girl would’ve gone the other direction before he even speaks. 

I’d like to add that this series does include videos with women in them. However, it is always the videos with men in it that always have the raunchiest tweets. I remember watching the one with Tom Ellis in it being extremely thirsty. While Tom took it in his stride, the shit he read just straight up made me question everything. And again, I’ve found myself saying some of the shit he had to read. 

And that made me think.

Why Is It Okay?

The fairer sex has had to deal with a whole lot of things, including objectification, abuse, and so much more. Yet despite this, we as a society are still trying to understand and figure how to navigate through situations like this and fail to even acknowledge it on most occasions. 

We can’t even get past eve-teasing and victim-blaming, but I’m about to say something controversial. Some men don’t have it as easy. Toxic masculinity and the fragile male ego has made it incredibly difficult for a lot of victims who happen to be men. 

The Buzzfeed example may not seem like much, but there are things like sexual harassment or assault, or even spousal abuse. I’ve seen so many instances where victim-blaming is still a thing with the male victims. Just this time, it is shaming them for not being manly enough. I’ve even seen comments about how some would enjoy going through the same experience.  

Sure, we made fun of Kanye West and Will Smith. Sure, all of us would like a piece of celebs like Chris Hemsworth, Evans, Pratt, or any other Chris Hollywood has to offer. But is it okay just because they’re men? I mean yes, female celebs still get sexualised, I’m not denying that. All I’m saying is that so many people get away with creepy one-liners or odd sexual behaviour because they’re women. 

Here’s another example. I happened to come across a Tik Tok video on Instagram not too long ago. Some guy happens to have a teeny tiny hole in his tight grey shirt, and some girl attempts to slide her finger in the hole, while he pushes her away. This goes on for a while until she manages to make the hole bigger. And she eventually rips the front of his shirt, saying “Show us your abs”. I did see people rage in the comments. Some so many men didn’t seem to mind it. 

It looks like men are the ones who are ridiculing another man who also happens to be a victim, but it is an issue nonetheless. And even though it’s very controversial of me to say this, regardless of their gender; a victim is a victim. And we as a society need to learn to respect that. It doesn’t matter if it looks like your tiny wife or girlfriend looks like she would never hurt you, she could. It’s not okay to touch someone without their consent. It’s not okay to be creepy and say weird shit unless the person is okay with it. And that’s that. 

It’s gone as far as making absurd rules like men can’t cry, or men can’t feel pain, and so on. However, that’s far from the truth. But what we don’t realise is that creating these weird expectations do more damage than good. It makes them feel like they shouldn’t emote, or as we’ve seen, it just manifests into toxic masculinity or the infamous fragile male ego. Nobody wants that or has the time for that.

I know I haven’t covered all that there is, but if you think I’ve missed something important, let me know. And if you enjoyed reading this, you can find more of my work here!