Throughout history, women have been vilified, insulted, degraded, and made fools of by the public. Why is that? Why is it when a heterosexual celebrity breaks up, the woman is automatically blamed? Why do people assume that it is because she’s the one who is lacking in the relationship? Why do women get vilified if they don’t want a family, if they don’t want to have children? Why are there so many expectations put upon them to be better and to get better?

      It is honestly amazing that people can find such long lists of reasons to blame women for. It’s not just men who are doing the blaming which is surprising, there are also plenty of women, who were encouraged by society to blame themselves and other women who are slightly out of the norm. Men have a problem with women expressing their sexuality and being comfortable with their bodies. Men have a problem of sexualizing every woman they see.

      If we rewind time for a bit, go back to France during the 1800s, the vilification of Marie Antoinette is proof of this. The French Republic absolutely despised her, hated her because she said “let them eat cake” as the poor plebeians were dying of hunger. Or were they? Were they dying of hunger or is this just something that’s been perpetuated by the media so much so that it seems like an actual history fact. The latter is the case. Marie Antoinette never said that. 

   Maria Antoinette, at 14, got forced into marriage to a tyrant young king. She had a taste for extravagance, a taste for the lavish lifestyle like any other royal before her, relishing in jewelry, fancy drapes, and luxurious hair. She loved to eat amazing foods and loved portraits. Yet,  why was she so villainized? That places a part as to why the media villiniazed her–she was just too feminine to them. Which sucks because yet again, she was an innocent child. Also, people often tend to hate young successful women. 

    When Antoinette was brought to the guillotine, she was with her son, and in front of him, the people of France chopped her head off. Her last words being, “ I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children. My blood alone remains: take it, but do not make me suffer long.” She just wanted to be liked and loved. Like any other 14 year old young child. 

     Cases of women suffering in the media are quite common, Marie Antoinette is perhaps the most extreme one of these cases. In  modern day, the sexism experienced by Britney Spears faced constant harassment by the press when she was younger and she continuously gets harassed now as well. She has mental health issues and could not have any freedom over her life for a certain period of time. Back in the early 2000s and 2010s, Britney would be stalked. The press gossiped about it, made her seem crazy, made her seem like a bad mother to her children. Why was that? Why was the media completely and utterly obsessed with her? It’s because she is young and has the slightest bit of fame. 

    The media hates women, they have hated them for the longest time, but it’s not just the media, society hates women as well. If society stopped contributing to the gossip that the media puts out, the world would be such a better place. It would be so much easier to escape from the pressures of society than to be held in its claws. That would be too much of a perfect society though. Because now women have started to go after other women, they have villainized each other and it’s almost a competition at this point to see who is the better woman. 

     “Feminism is when women are better and above men”. Yeah at this point maybe it should be about that with how some of these men are acting. Social justice warriors or SJAs get a horrible controversy around them, some of them are extreme but most of them bring up a good point. The wage gap between women and men has been growing and the only thing that these women want is equality, yet that gets turned down, why because men have made SJAs out to be total psychopaths. 

      Women will face constant harassment by the media till the end of time, they will get shunned because society has encouraged that mindset that comes into play when people look down upon women. If society does not change, then nothing will. If they will not stop influencing sales and clicks then the world will be a better place.