Looking into the thought of why girls should act and behave a certain way. It seems like it is an ideal that was sold in the 1950s by men. So it doesn't really say anything about their true nature.
Now the question is why do men want girls to act in that manner. The hypothesis would be that it has some kind biological roots. That men need to feel like they are the protectors of weak and innocent.
Assuming a fraction of this is true, then I can understand the #feminism movement to ridicule the #propaganda apposed onto womenkind to suppress their nature.
@barefootstache I believe expectations placed onto men and women are a product of the common beliefs in their society at the time rather than a biological function.
In my opinion, the reason why many of these beliefs seem to be the same in many different cultures is because men and women have a discernible physical difference, which means one sex is often better than the other in certain activities.
For higher efficiency, men and women adopted the roles that they were good at. Men excel at strength, which was necessary to survive in the tribal and later the agricultural world, which means men possessed more utility and thus more authority. Women stayed home and cared for children, since children required their mothers, and because a lack of strength made women useless for physical labor in harsher areas. Eventually, people started to affix tasks to the sex that practiced them.
We do have empirical evidence in this regard. Descendants of societies which required a higher amount of physical labor due to their harsher climate tend to have strict gender norms, whereas descendants of societies with agricultural endowments due to which planting and harvesting crops did not require heavy physical labor have less strict gender norms.
@SeekingBlood do agree that society is the biggest factor. Though from what I see, men have the majority say in what it should be.
Let’s say we take the example that women should be pretty or aesthetically pleasing. This seems like a marketing gimmick.
Or the idea that women don’t fart, but rather shoot rainbows and always smell good.
I can understand that the majority is cultural or societal standards, though some of it has a biological component.