A few weeks ago, I wrote a story for The Brown & White about long distance relationships and how the economy is affected. My sources (Lehigh students and a phsyciologist from the counseling center) said making a long distance relationship work takes a lot of time, effort and money. They also talked about what types of relationships they see on campus and how common these relationships are. All three sources said committed relationships are not very common, but casual "hook-up-based" ones are. They also said this seems to be a trend at colleges country-wide. This made me think about how relationships have changed over the past 10-20 years. It seems like my parents and my friends parents are always talking about how students used to go on dates when they were in school. Today, while it does happen, it is rare to see two Lehigh students "on a date," eating at an upscale restaurant or going to the movies.
So, why have things changed? Does this have to do with the media, including movies, television, magazines and so on?
Here is the link:
http://media.www.thebrownandwhite.com/media/storage/paper1233/news/2009/02/13/Lifestyle/Students.Pay.The.Price.For.LongDistance.Love-3627120.shtml
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I think a lot of people are trying to figure out the cause behind this gradual change in the types of relationships we see today. I believe the media, such as movies, television, magazines, etc do have a certain impact on today's casual hook-up based relationships, as opposed to dating which was more prevalant about 10-20 years ago. People's values have changed drastically in the past 20 years. Females used to be more old-fashioned and lady-like and expected a boy to take her on a nice date. Yet, today this is not the case. Boys are not expected to take girls out first and try to impress them before the relationship gets more serious. I think females have lowered their values and expectations of males. This in fact may be due to the way females are portrayed in the media today. For instance, women act more provocatively on television today, such as on those MTV and VH1 reality shows like "Rock of Love", where girls compete to be Brett Michael's girlfriend. A show like this would have never been shown on television 20 years ago. Thus, today it is more accepted for females to act loosely and are portrayed in a different light in the media than they were 20 years ago. This gives males the idea that women are ok with casual hook-up based relationships.
ReplyDeleteAnother point to consider is that today women have more power than before and are perhaps equal to men in wealth and success. Can this be a reason why men feel like they do not have to be the dominant one anymore, and do not find it necessary to take care of the female or impress her by taking her out on dates?