Award show after award show, I’ve come to learn that when you roll out the red carpet, you roll out the criticisms of every audience member. This week’s VMAs and Emmys were a back-to-back tennis match of “who wore what” jargon. I’m all for highlighting the best red carpet looks and I might make a remark about a dress I didn’t love here and there, but while scrolling through the comment sections of many articles I was astounded to find criticisms that ran deep. When will we realize that shaming other women with derogatory language and crude comments is scrapping at the bottom of the barrel of civility?
I follow sites like Buzzfeed religiously and I expect the discussion area to be filled with a mixture of thoughtful, brilliant, lewd and idiotic remarks. Forums are meant for debates – that’s just a fact. I was pretty disturbed to find some of the horrendous things girls are saying about Lena Dunham’s eye-catching Giambattista Valli ensemble. I say eye-catching in the best sense of the word because while I will agree with the some of the wittier Twitter comments bantering about things Lena Dunham looked like (including a beautiful ombre wedding cake), she was bold in her decision and felt comfortable in it. As she stated herself on Twitter, the dress “looks like cake and feels like sweatpants.” Some of the comments are embarrassing for women who are actually trying to better each other and carry the feminist movement rather than stunt its growth.