The Expectations, The Pressures, and The Roles

I hate the fact that there's a bunch of "shoulds" and expectations in life. I hate that you have to measure yourself in numbers, such as how much money you have, how many likes you have on your selfie and how high your GPA is to measure success. I hate that as a woman, I'm expected to fill the role as a homemaker and mother or fill the role as a bitchy boss with no in-between. I hate that if you don't have sex than you are considered to be a prude, but if you do than you're an automatic slut. I hate that boys will be boys when they do something stupid. 

There's so many expectations out there that it makes my head spin. As a woman, I'm expected to be a certain way. And, it's a lot of fucking pressure. I want to talk about the pressure of relationships, as it seems to be a prominent one. Some people expect you to wait until you have a ring and a cupcake looking dress to lose your v-card. But, what if I don't want to get married? What if I want to have a partner, someone who I live with but don't share a last name or a legal right to? Does that mean I should never, under conservative view points, never have sex? 

Society is changing, but still we romanticize relationships and weddings as being the ideal goal. We still view marriage as being an ideal goal, but we don't know what that little expensive rock entails other than forever love and happiness. We've grown to have expectations for what marriage is, what it means and what will happen when we are married. The same goes for a boyfriend. We expect to be happy, the label means that you're one of the cool kids. 

However, the unofficial relationships, the kids who are out there committed to each other but don't label it, are the ones are even better. They are the ones who are two people who think they are special, they love and care about each other, yet they don't say what the relationship is. In some ways, those are viewed as cheap relationships, because the couple is viewed as being screwed up because they couldn't commit and make the label work. But they are the ones who are making things work their own way. 

Success is also measured in numbers. How many likes did you get on the last selfie you posted? Did it make you sad that you didn't get as many as your friend? Or, what about your GPA. Did you make Dean's List? If you didn't, but still got a 3.0 GPA or higher, that means you've failed. And that's fucking stupid. 

I think relationships, numbers measuring your self worth and trying to live based on what other people want you to be is just dumb. In life, the only person you have to please is yourself. Not your mother, friend whose outspoken or your grandparents. People will have their own version of you, and therefore give you their opinion to do what they think makes you happy. However, you're the one who has to live with it, the one who has to look in the mirror in the morning and like what you see. So fuck them all, listen to your heart and remember that sometimes the only voice that matters is the one you have internally. 

Society and the Single Girl: Labels

Boyfriend. Girlfriend. Fiancee. Husband. Wife. Friends with benefits. Friends without the benefits. 

When staring at these things, what do you think they all have in common? I will give you a moment to ponder this as you are getting a pencil, slash getting a cup of coffee. Okay, you give up. Okay I will tell you since I am a good person and all. 

The following nouns that I have just shared with you are labels for relationships. Labels are something that cause you to put something or someone into a category, and make them that certain thing. Labels are something that add pressure to the relationship. But, where do the pressures of labels come from you may ask?

Well, it comes from society. From watching others on your social media newsfeed who are happy in love because their significant other gave them chocolate and roses on Valentine's Day while you're lucky enough to even get a 'Happy V-Day' text. We live in a society where a relationship label is sort of like a check point. Let's take the expectations of the word 'boyfriend.' A boyfriend is someone who you go out with on a whatever you want basis, buys you presents and tells you that you're the most gorgeous thing in the world. It's been a while since I have had one of those, but if memory and the help of watching a ton of chick flick movies serve me right, that's the way that it goes. But what is the need to put a label on something deriving from? Can we just have fun without putting a sticker on it?

We need labels for those perfect people out there. They are those people who have the perfect relationship with the perfect boyfriend. They are the ones that post about their bae being the best in the world. They ones who will have the perfect wedding and the perfect children where the cycle of perfection will then continue with a bang. They are the ones who ask you what is going on with that guy who you are hooking up with, and then judge you since there is no indicator whether or not you are just friends with benefits or something more. 

Those people pressure you to a mold. We live in a society where we can write our own 140 status updates, but when it comes to writing our own rules for our relationship patterns we often fall short of having something to say. The relationships that we have sometimes don't need a label. However, because we are in the world where we need to 'ship it or make it Facebook offical, we need to come up with those labels. 

I am a semi-fan of the label. I like them because then you know kind of what to expect. If I ever get a boyfriend, I know to expect that I am hopefully the only girl that he is doing stuff with, and that I can introduce him as my boyfriend. I don't like them because we are not a black and white society. Instead the lines are blurred. Of our genders, and of each other in general. Therefore, we can not expect relationships to fit those black and white labels. 

Let's just leave the labels for when we go shopping, and out of our love lives. Wouldn't that be easier?

Rocking the Labels..Or the Labeless..

When I was in high school, the in-thing was to wear clothes with a seagull on the bottom. Or T-shirts with brands such as Hollister, or Abercrombie typed across the shirt. Purses had to have the 'C" and the jewelry had to be from a certain company. If you had it, you were one of the club. If you didnt, then you were outta luck. 

We seem to label pretty much everything in life. We label clothing, such as it being of a certain brand being bad or good. We label cars with the concept. We even go as far as to label people as being a 'boy', or a 'girl.' We even like to label our relationship status, such as 'single,' 'casually dating', 'just friends', and so on. My question is, who made the label maker out of life?

Many times while dating we look for that label. You know what I'm talking about. "Does he want me to be his girlfriend?" "Are we dating?" I have had so many conversations with several of my friends about this type of thing. We antagonize over this, and make ourselves sick over finding some sort of answers. And, while we need labels to find clarity, I can't help but think at the same time that the labels we crave so much in our day to day life adds some sort of pressure. Pressure to play that some sort of role, and sometimes pressure to maintain that role. 

So, my question is why do we create labels in the first place? 

I can't really tell you the answer that you're all dying to know. But I can tell you this. We create labels simply because they want to put something in it's special place or compartment. It's something that we look for answers for, and the only way we can get them is to simply label it. Sad, but true. Living this sort of lifestyle can only drive us crazy because we are searching for that label. Whether it's a husband or a designer bag, we can't help but realize that it's a true thing. 

Sometimes we need to stop looking for things. Stop looking for the boyfriend to come, because you can turn around a thousand corners and still not find Mr. (or Miss) Right. Live life to the fullest and think positively. Live in every moment and not want to label it. However if you want to put a hashtag on it then it's perfectly fine. 

At the end of the day, sometimes we really need to look past the labels to create something that fits perfectly with us. And that may be the designer bag from Chanel, or the one from Amazon that costs about ten dollars. I believe that if we try not so desperately to fill the labels, chances are you're not going to come across the knockoffs so easily.

My main goal in life is to avoid the knockoff, and go for something real. Whether it's in love, where I find someone that may be my 'husband', or 'partner', or in my closet where my clothes are now arranged by my style not by my peers, I can't help but think one thing. Labels or not, I am pretty awesome. And that's all that really matters.