My roommate is such a sellout to pop culture. Something in me just rebels against taking what they hand to us over the radio, through TV, through all the mass media. He’s addicted to Britney Spears, LeAnn Rimes, and every other shallow pop group on the face of the earth. I wouldn’t mind it if it were decent music, but it’s not. It’s commercial and insincere and plasticky. Part of discovering who we are, creating our individual, is figuring out what we like and don’t like, our tastes and preferences. I don’t want culture telling me what to like, what’s good. The other end of the spectrum is the self-conscious counter-culturism so prevalent on liberal university campuses, people who turn up their nose if you don’t know what band they’re talking about at any given moment. *sigh* Why can’t males get their heads out of the sand and think about things besides beer and scantily clad women? I kid you not, in some form or another, that is what the majority of my hallmates discuss most of the time. It’s not a myth. There’s so much to explore, to experience, so much that’s worthwhile in life without getting wasted every weekend. Change isn’t something to be feared.
It would be easy to say that some men stick to what they can comprehend…which may never extend beyond the conversational or recreational topics of beer and scantily clad women…which only makes me wonder what any man really understands about beer or women anyway…
Somehow I just feel like I’m doing my hallmates too much of a favor to try to analyze their thinking patterns. Being a male, I understand them; I’m just disgusted by the singlemindedness of it all and the community that created and perpetuates it. This would be the “locker room” crowd, endorsing the proclamation of such conquests as a new quantity of beer consumed and “admiration” of a passing female. But I don’t even want to do them the justice of explaining it all. *sigh* They’re still boys, unaware of what it truly means to be a man, something I’m slowly, tentatively discovering.