A Twitter search of the hashtag “goals” revealed to me a serious cultural problem. It led me to this tweet: “Today at Chipotle a girl asked her boyfriend if she could get chips with their meal and he replied, ‘It's your world babe I'm just living in it.’” It was followed by a few blank lines so that readers could soak it in before the Twitter user wrote, “Ok need.” It got 85,000 retweets.
My Instagram search wasn’t much better. A man recently went viral for calling his “curvy” wife sexy. Yes, his actual wife that he is actually married to. “Her shape and size won't be the one featured on the cover of Cosmopolitan but it's the one featured in my life and in my heart,” he wrote in the caption under a posed photo of him staring longingly at her. Forty-thousand likes.
If you’re not seeing the problem, it’s not your fault. I’m sure these guys I’ve just called out are very fine people and I’m sure they meant well. I just don’t know if their comments would have been nearly as celebrated as they were, let’s say, a decade ago.
Maybe it’s a sign of the times. Maybe we’re blowing every small act of human decency out of proportion because small acts of human decency are becoming harder to find. Still, I wonder, maybe we wouldn’t be so enthralled with a $1.30 bag of Chipotle chips and a Tim McGraw lyric if we weren’t slightly stirred by the holding of a door, the liking of a picture, or the sustaining of a Snapchat streak.
Morality is not chivalry. We’re conflating these two ideas, and we’re confusing the right thing to do with the generous thing to do. It all starts with how we talk about people we’re into at our brunch tables and in our group chats. For example, if you hook up with someone and they drive you home afterwards, how do you tell your friends? Is it an afterthought or is it a part of the story?
Rhetoric matters. If we’re getting excited over things that are just morally right, we’re unknowingly lowering the standards of what we think we deserve. Of course, we should smile and say thank you when we’re on the receiving end of a relatively kind or decent gesture. But if we’re completely satisfied with a ride home and a t-shirt, we’ll stop looking for the 90’s rom-com chivalry we claim we might want someday.
Before I leave you with this food for thought, I’ll let you know that I watched way too much “Sex and the City” this summer, and now it seems that I have my own column. It happens quick. But as your very own, much more feminist and just slightly less attractive version of Carrie Bradshaw, I promise to bring you unsolicited advice and unearned words of wisdom that will serve as a momentary and necessary break from the day’s news. I’ll hold up my end of the bargain if you remember to read it on Thursdays. It might help take your mind off of your weekly ladies night hangover, too. And you probably shouldn’t read your texts from last night anyways. Maybe that’s just me. You get the point. Read the column. I’ll see you here next Thursday.
Carly Breit is a UF journalism senior. Her column appears on Thursdays.
