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Romantic Movies Are Fun — But What Are They Teaching Young Girls?
This is embarrassing to admit but —
I recently watched Netflix's recreation of the book series, After.
To spare your brain cells and 106 minutes of your time, I’ll summarize.
It's your typical good-girl-tames-the-bad-boy trope.
It started out as a novel — a Harry Styles fanfiction, to be exact — and has now become a series of (astoundingly bad) movies.
The storyline is popular with teen girls, but did the creators of this movie ever stop and think about the messages this is sending?
No?
No. Definitely not.
I’m a sucker for a good love story.
I’m not knocking romance novels but the bad-boy-falls-for-innocent-good-girl plot usually includes a dude who needs a therapist — not a girlfriend.
Christian Grey, much?
It would be one thing if we all universally understood that these types of stories are fiction and purely for our entertainment, but this is generally not at all the case.
