Generation Z needs to learn how our economy works. We are the ones who will need to contend with its future implications as we mature in an age defined by post-pandemic monetary policies. 

Our money system is not real, to put it in the most absurd and alarmist terms. Monetary policy is carried out by an institution that isn’t fully run by the government, with a currency that has no tangible backing. The arbitrary nature of this is simultaneously fascinating and terrifying.

Any impulse to don a tinfoil hat is not completely unfounded. At its base level, it’s mind-boggling to think one of the most real and concrete aspects of our reality is unreal itself. 

However, skepticism and conspiracy theories don’t have to collapse into each other. They’re often treated as if they always operate within the same continuum, but I like to think of them as a Venn diagram with overlaps. 

We can face our fears and resolve our dissonances with understanding and education. 

We need to address some of the shadows that lurk behind our concepts of money and economics and shine light on what is least understood and appreciated about our financial system, as well as address its pitfalls. 

Take this as a cursory guide to monetary policy for dummies, with a healthy grain of salt.

As a journalism major whose last encounter with any degree of economic thought was when I barely passed AP Macroeconomics, I often find our economic system elusive and confusing at best, if not downright sinister at worst. 

On its face, it is all of the above. Monetary policy and circulation are controlled by an institution not fully owned or operated by our government.

Joe Mahon, a regional outreach director at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, said while the Federal Reserve is not technically a government institution, it was established by the government, and its employees are very much public servants. 

“We conduct monetary policy with two goals in mind, and those are mandated by Congress,” Mahon said. “By act of Congress, we’re required to set monetary policy in order to try it and achieve maximum employment. The job market, the economy, is functioning, and the job market is keeping everybody able to be gainfully employed and price stability.” 

We aren’t tied to the gold standard, so the United States, along with many other countries, operates off of fiat money, a government-issued currency with no physical commodity, like gold or silver, backing it. There is also no limit on the amount the government can create. 

The Federal Reserve Bank conducts much of the government’s monetary policy, and while independent within the government, it’s still beholden to Congress. 

Some say the Federal Reserve is unconstitutional, arguing that the only explicit mention of economic power in the Constitution is relegated to Congress exclusively. Some take healthy skepticism to the furthest extreme, scapegoating the reserve as the sole, purposeful cause of economic crises. That’s blatantly impossible and unproductive. 

Tim Collins, a political science lecturer at the University of Minnesota, said government skepticism is healthy and necessary, as room for accountability is factored into a lot of the government’s mechanisms to allow for progress. 

“People should always be skeptical of the government,” Collins said. “Usually, when government puts out information, a lot of it has to be open and transparent by law, with support for it or sources for it, so it’s good to be skeptical of government. You should always question it.”

Made popular over the past few years in response to news of economic shutdowns and resuscitations post-pandemic was the half-ironic query, “Why can’t we just print more money?” 

It turns out there is no such thing as a dumb question. We’re existing in a somewhat unprecedented time in the history of our nation’s economy.

Mahon said in his view the COVID-19 pandemic caused the biggest shock to our economy since the Great Depression, and the key to stability was the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy actions. 

“In particular were some of the sort of emergency lending facilities that were set up very quickly,” Mahon said. “And then what we call large-scale asset purchases, or sometimes in the financial process return, referred to as quantitative easing.”

Mahon said this easing refers to the reduction of the Federal Funds rate, the interest rate that banks charge each other, to zero. 

“People sometimes refer to this as printing money, which is not inaccurate,” Mahon said. “It’s inaccurate in that we don’t literally print money like cash to buy these securities, but the defense does credit the financial institutions’ accounts that they’re buying those from, and that essentially puts a lot more money into circulation, it breaks down interest rates, and just basically makes monetary policy, makes the financial system more accommodative.”

The fact that money can be manipulated without a physical backing is both incredibly helpful and somewhat terrifying. However, despite what we might commonly think, a gold standard won’t save us and actually might lead us to be worse off. 

Mahon said over the short term, the value of gold in particular oscillates a lot, causing instability in the short term that makes it incredibly difficult to operate a business, given the way inventory prices are essentially up in the air, leading many nations to make the tradeoff.

“You can look at the price of gold, see how much it swings around on a day-to-day basis. Well, if your dollar is tied to the value of gold, that means the value of the dollar swings around pretty wild, too.”

A complex economic system for a complex world. Is it completely ideal? Absolutely not. 

We fear what we don’t understand, and to fear, we need to understand what we’re looking at.

Blonde bombshells like Sydney Sweeney and Sabrina Carpenter are supposedly appealing to the male gaze to make money, self-awarely commenting on their public personas and media treatment. This is ruffling feathers, but why now? 

Our collective fixation, as well as our loud and wrong commentary on the recent public actions of these two women, illustrates our staggering media illiteracy and misunderstanding of satire. Something’s just not clicking. 

If it’s the return to bro-culture or overtly male-gazey advertising we’re truly concerned about, we’re picking the wrong targets for our ire. 

Why is it that we are more offended by Carpenter’s tongue-in-cheek cover art for her upcoming album “Man’s Best Friend,” and its lead single “Manchild,” than we were about the return of the Carl’s Jr. girl, as embodied by Alix Earle? The latter is a far more blatant appeal to men, and objectifies Earle to a far greater extent than Carpenter in her album’s cover. 

Why are we surprised by Sweeney’s recent Dr. Squatch campaign selling soap flavored with her own bathwater after we saw a year of “Saltburn” bathwater memes, and when she explicitly stated the bulk of her income stems from brand deals and advertisements? 

What just seems like a smart PR move on her part is turning into something much bigger than it needs to be. 

Using these women as lightning rods for outrage won’t propel the women’s movement any further, and it’s clear with any amount of deconstruction that there are layers of irony, self-awareness and satire to what they’re doing. 

Yet, they’re receiving significantly more backlash than far more blatant, sinister or simplistic objectifications of women. 

The holes in the logic behind the criticisms of these public figures deconstruct so easily that it’s made abundantly clear something isn’t clicking for consumers. Whether or not the half-baked satire or self-awareness lands is more or less irrelevant. It’s not as if they’re truly subversive. 

If critics’ argument is that they’re receiving more outrage because of how mainstream they are, further spotlighting them as scapegoats won’t help. By doing this, we force them to double down or backtrack for the sake of their reputations.  

This doesn’t help tackle the causes of our discomfort on the topics of female sexuality, advertising or objectification. 

Ruth DeFoster, an assistant professor who teaches media and popular culture at the University of Minnesota, said she thinks people online tend to become outraged at sexuality in general, and may often miss the point entirely in the midst of their outrage. 

“I think people are looking at Sabrina Carpenter, looking at Sydney Sweeney, and they’re seeing women who are very sexually empowered, who are not apologizing for that, and that’s what’s offending them,” DeFoster said. “I don’t think that’s a valid thing to be upset about. I think there are more complicated gender and sexual dynamics here that we could interrogate.”

Charles Kronengold, a professor of cultural studies and comparative literature at the University, said part of the outrage can be attributed to a disconnect in media literacy online. 

“I worry about whether that whole register of satire, illusion, any kind of self-conscious pointing to one’s own stardom,” Kronengold said. “Any clear sense that you’re addressing one audience in one way, but another audience in a different way, a lot of that stuff is key to media literacy, and does seem to be slipping away.”

Does it help Carpenter’s sales that she is a sex symbol? Absolutely. 

Does this fact cancel out any genuine artistic merit or satire she puts out? Not at all. 

Her status as a sex symbol can provide additional context and grounds for potential subversion. 

What does it say about us that an album with a lead single depicting men as dumb or shallow is going above all of our heads because we only see a pretty blonde girl? 

Carpenter is not some great feminist or generational songwriting talent. Her position as a lightning rod for alarmist discourse may inadvertently turn this otherwise expected, and somewhat derivative, album rollout into some kind of metatextual masterpiece. 

It’s not up to the artist to control all possible interpretations of their work.

Even Sweeney’s more blatant attempt to make a buck off the millions of men who lust after her and promote herself as a sex symbol still isn’t uncritical or unnuanced. 

Sweeney has spoken extensively on her relationship with the press and the public’s relationship to her body specifically. The idea for the ad campaign in which she sells her bathwater in the form of a soap stems from public reactions to a previous ad for Dr. Squatch that garnered significant attention. People even specifically asked for the very thing she’s selling now. 

“When your fans start asking for your bathwater, you can either ignore it or turn it into a bar of Dr. Squatch soap,” Sweeney said in a press release. 

She’s quite literally laughing her way to the bank, and turning a profit off the men who objectify her. In a world of far more blatant appeals to men, why is it this, of all things, that’s causing such outrage?

In our attention economy, we should place mind over matter. Our anger at these women is misdirected and unproductive. We’re acting as if they don’t have entire teams of professionals and executives behind them. 

Kronengold said even the most well-intentioned and effective satire loses a lot of its punch when these images are created and distributed by major corporations to sell to us. 

“It’s one thing for these women to be doing it,” Kronengold said. “But once it’s also Unilever doing it, it doesn’t seem so cute and edgy.” 

We are having an astounding amount of difficulty parsing genuine satire and self-aware debasement from classic Hollywood cash grabs. More importantly, these two things can be true at once, and all of these intentions and interpretations can coexist in a singular advertisement or body of work. 

The confluence of self-awareness, satire and the male gaze for profit here is complex, nuanced and nearly completely irrelevant. Why are we feeding the fire with our hard-earned money and taking time out of our day to stoke the flames?

We deserve better feminists, but we also deserve better critical thought as a whole. We aren’t looking in the right places.

Blonde bombshells like Sydney Sweeney and Sabrina Carpenter are supposedly appealing to the male gaze to make money, self-awarely commenting on their public personas and media treatment. This is ruffling feathers, but why now? 

Our collective fixation, as well as our loud and wrong commentary on the recent public actions of these two women, illustrates our staggering media illiteracy and misunderstanding of satire. Something’s just not clicking. 

If it’s the return to bro-culture or overtly male-gazey advertising we’re truly concerned about, we’re picking the wrong targets for our ire. 

Why is it that we are more offended by Carpenter’s tongue-in-cheek cover art for her upcoming album “Man’s Best Friend,” and its lead single “Manchild,” than we were about the return of the Carl’s Jr. girl, as embodied by Alix Earle? The latter is a far more blatant appeal to men, and objectifies Earle to a far greater extent than Carpenter in her album’s cover. 

Why are we surprised by Sweeney’s recent Dr. Squatch campaign selling soap flavored with her own bathwater after we saw a year of “Saltburn” bathwater memes, and when she explicitly stated the bulk of her income stems from brand deals and advertisements? 

What just seems like a smart PR move on her part is turning into something much bigger than it needs to be. 

Using these women as lightning rods for outrage won’t propel the women’s movement any further, and it’s clear with any amount of deconstruction that there are layers of irony, self-awareness and satire to what they’re doing. 

Yet, they’re receiving significantly more backlash than far more blatant, sinister or simplistic objectifications of women. 

The holes in the logic behind the criticisms of these public figures deconstruct so easily that it’s made abundantly clear something isn’t clicking for consumers. Whether or not the half-baked satire or self-awareness lands is more or less irrelevant. It’s not as if they’re truly subversive. 

If critics’ argument is that they’re receiving more outrage because of how mainstream they are, further spotlighting them as scapegoats won’t help. By doing this, we force them to double down or backtrack for the sake of their reputations.  

This doesn’t help tackle the causes of our discomfort on the topics of female sexuality, advertising or objectification. 

Ruth DeFoster, an assistant professor who teaches media and popular culture at the University of Minnesota, said she thinks people online tend to become outraged at sexuality in general, and may often miss the point entirely in the midst of their outrage. 

“I think people are looking at Sabrina Carpenter, looking at Sydney Sweeney, and they’re seeing women who are very sexually empowered, who are not apologizing for that, and that’s what’s offending them,” DeFoster said. “I don’t think that’s a valid thing to be upset about. I think there are more complicated gender and sexual dynamics here that we could interrogate.”

Charles Kronengold, a professor of cultural studies and comparative literature at the University, said part of the outrage can be attributed to a disconnect in media literacy online. 

“I worry about whether that whole register of satire, illusion, any kind of self-conscious pointing to one’s own stardom,” Kronengold said. “Any clear sense that you’re addressing one audience in one way, but another audience in a different way, a lot of that stuff is key to media literacy, and does seem to be slipping away.”

Does it help Carpenter’s sales that she is a sex symbol? Absolutely. 

Does this fact cancel out any genuine artistic merit or satire she puts out? Not at all. 

Her status as a sex symbol can provide additional context and grounds for potential subversion. 

What does it say about us that an album with a lead single depicting men as dumb or shallow is going above all of our heads because we only see a pretty blonde girl? 

Carpenter is not some great feminist or generational songwriting talent. Her position as a lightning rod for alarmist discourse may inadvertently turn this otherwise expected, and somewhat derivative, album rollout into some kind of metatextual masterpiece. 

It’s not up to the artist to control all possible interpretations of their work.

Even Sweeney’s more blatant attempt to make a buck off the millions of men who lust after her and promote herself as a sex symbol still isn’t uncritical or unnuanced. 

Sweeney has spoken extensively on her relationship with the press and the public’s relationship to her body specifically. The idea for the ad campaign in which she sells her bathwater in the form of a soap stems from public reactions to a previous ad for Dr. Squatch that garnered significant attention. People even specifically asked for the very thing she’s selling now. 

“When your fans start asking for your bathwater, you can either ignore it or turn it into a bar of Dr. Squatch soap,” Sweeney said in a press release. 

She’s quite literally laughing her way to the bank, and turning a profit off the men who objectify her. In a world of far more blatant appeals to men, why is it this, of all things, that’s causing such outrage?

In our attention economy, we should place mind over matter. Our anger at these women is misdirected and unproductive. We’re acting as if they don’t have entire teams of professionals and executives behind them. 

Kronengold said even the most well-intentioned and effective satire loses a lot of its punch when these images are created and distributed by major corporations to sell to us. 

“It’s one thing for these women to be doing it,” Kronengold said. “But once it’s also Unilever doing it, it doesn’t seem so cute and edgy.” 

We are having an astounding amount of difficulty parsing genuine satire and self-aware debasement from classic Hollywood cash grabs. More importantly, these two things can be true at once, and all of these intentions and interpretations can coexist in a singular advertisement or body of work. 

The confluence of self-awareness, satire and the male gaze for profit here is complex, nuanced and nearly completely irrelevant. Why are we feeding the fire with our hard-earned money and taking time out of our day to stoke the flames?

We deserve better feminists, but we also deserve better critical thought as a whole. We aren’t looking in the right places.

Blonde bombshells like Sydney Sweeney and Sabrina Carpenter are supposedly appealing to the male gaze to make money, self-awarely commenting on their public personas and media treatment. This is ruffling feathers, but why now? 

Our collective fixation, as well as our loud and wrong commentary on the recent public actions of these two women, illustrates our staggering media illiteracy and misunderstanding of satire. Something’s just not clicking. 

If it’s the return to bro-culture or overtly male-gazey advertising we’re truly concerned about, we’re picking the wrong targets for our ire. 

Why is it that we are more offended by Carpenter’s tongue-in-cheek cover art for her upcoming album “Man’s Best Friend,” and its lead single “Manchild,” than we were about the return of the Carl’s Jr. girl, as embodied by Alix Earle? The latter is a far more blatant appeal to men, and objectifies Earle to a far greater extent than Carpenter in her album’s cover. 

Why are we surprised by Sweeney’s recent Dr. Squatch campaign selling soap flavored with her own bathwater after we saw a year of “Saltburn” bathwater memes, and when she explicitly stated the bulk of her income stems from brand deals and advertisements? 

What just seems like a smart PR move on her part is turning into something much bigger than it needs to be. 

Using these women as lightning rods for outrage won’t propel the women’s movement any further, and it’s clear with any amount of deconstruction that there are layers of irony, self-awareness and satire to what they’re doing. 

Yet, they’re receiving significantly more backlash than far more blatant, sinister or simplistic objectifications of women. 

The holes in the logic behind the criticisms of these public figures deconstruct so easily that it’s made abundantly clear something isn’t clicking for consumers. Whether or not the half-baked satire or self-awareness lands is more or less irrelevant. It’s not as if they’re truly subversive. 

If critics’ argument is that they’re receiving more outrage because of how mainstream they are, further spotlighting them as scapegoats won’t help. By doing this, we force them to double down or backtrack for the sake of their reputations.  

This doesn’t help tackle the causes of our discomfort on the topics of female sexuality, advertising or objectification. 

Ruth DeFoster, an assistant professor who teaches media and popular culture at the University of Minnesota, said she thinks people online tend to become outraged at sexuality in general, and may often miss the point entirely in the midst of their outrage. 

“I think people are looking at Sabrina Carpenter, looking at Sydney Sweeney, and they’re seeing women who are very sexually empowered, who are not apologizing for that, and that’s what’s offending them,” DeFoster said. “I don’t think that’s a valid thing to be upset about. I think there are more complicated gender and sexual dynamics here that we could interrogate.”

Charles Kronengold, a professor of cultural studies and comparative literature at the University, said part of the outrage can be attributed to a disconnect in media literacy online. 

“I worry about whether that whole register of satire, illusion, any kind of self-conscious pointing to one’s own stardom,” Kronengold said. “Any clear sense that you’re addressing one audience in one way, but another audience in a different way, a lot of that stuff is key to media literacy, and does seem to be slipping away.”

Does it help Carpenter’s sales that she is a sex symbol? Absolutely. 

Does this fact cancel out any genuine artistic merit or satire she puts out? Not at all. 

Her status as a sex symbol can provide additional context and grounds for potential subversion. 

What does it say about us that an album with a lead single depicting men as dumb or shallow is going above all of our heads because we only see a pretty blonde girl? 

Carpenter is not some great feminist or generational songwriting talent. Her position as a lightning rod for alarmist discourse may inadvertently turn this otherwise expected, and somewhat derivative, album rollout into some kind of metatextual masterpiece. 

It’s not up to the artist to control all possible interpretations of their work.

Even Sweeney’s more blatant attempt to make a buck off the millions of men who lust after her and promote herself as a sex symbol still isn’t uncritical or unnuanced. 

Sweeney has spoken extensively on her relationship with the press and the public’s relationship to her body specifically. The idea for the ad campaign in which she sells her bathwater in the form of a soap stems from public reactions to a previous ad for Dr. Squatch that garnered significant attention. People even specifically asked for the very thing she’s selling now. 

“When your fans start asking for your bathwater, you can either ignore it or turn it into a bar of Dr. Squatch soap,” Sweeney said in a press release. 

She’s quite literally laughing her way to the bank, and turning a profit off the men who objectify her. In a world of far more blatant appeals to men, why is it this, of all things, that’s causing such outrage?

In our attention economy, we should place mind over matter. Our anger at these women is misdirected and unproductive. We’re acting as if they don’t have entire teams of professionals and executives behind them. 

Kronengold said even the most well-intentioned and effective satire loses a lot of its punch when these images are created and distributed by major corporations to sell to us. 

“It’s one thing for these women to be doing it,” Kronengold said. “But once it’s also Unilever doing it, it doesn’t seem so cute and edgy.” 

We are having an astounding amount of difficulty parsing genuine satire and self-aware debasement from classic Hollywood cash grabs. More importantly, these two things can be true at once, and all of these intentions and interpretations can coexist in a singular advertisement or body of work. 

The confluence of self-awareness, satire and the male gaze for profit here is complex, nuanced and nearly completely irrelevant. Why are we feeding the fire with our hard-earned money and taking time out of our day to stoke the flames?

We deserve better feminists, but we also deserve better critical thought as a whole. We aren’t looking in the right places.

Blonde bombshells like Sydney Sweeney and Sabrina Carpenter are supposedly appealing to the male gaze to make money, self-awarely commenting on their public personas and media treatment. This is ruffling feathers, but why now? 

Our collective fixation, as well as our loud and wrong commentary on the recent public actions of these two women, illustrates our staggering media illiteracy and misunderstanding of satire. Something’s just not clicking. 

If it’s the return to bro-culture or overtly male-gazey advertising we’re truly concerned about, we’re picking the wrong targets for our ire. 

Why is it that we are more offended by Carpenter’s tongue-in-cheek cover art for her upcoming album “Man’s Best Friend,” and its lead single “Manchild,” than we were about the return of the Carl’s Jr. girl, as embodied by Alix Earle? The latter is a far more blatant appeal to men, and objectifies Earle to a far greater extent than Carpenter in her album’s cover. 

Why are we surprised by Sweeney’s recent Dr. Squatch campaign selling soap flavored with her own bathwater after we saw a year of “Saltburn” bathwater memes, and when she explicitly stated the bulk of her income stems from brand deals and advertisements? 

What just seems like a smart PR move on her part is turning into something much bigger than it needs to be. 

Using these women as lightning rods for outrage won’t propel the women’s movement any further, and it’s clear with any amount of deconstruction that there are layers of irony, self-awareness and satire to what they’re doing. 

Yet, they’re receiving significantly more backlash than far more blatant, sinister or simplistic objectifications of women. 

The holes in the logic behind the criticisms of these public figures deconstruct so easily that it’s made abundantly clear something isn’t clicking for consumers. Whether or not the half-baked satire or self-awareness lands is more or less irrelevant. It’s not as if they’re truly subversive. 

If critics’ argument is that they’re receiving more outrage because of how mainstream they are, further spotlighting them as scapegoats won’t help. By doing this, we force them to double down or backtrack for the sake of their reputations.  

This doesn’t help tackle the causes of our discomfort on the topics of female sexuality, advertising or objectification. 

Ruth DeFoster, an assistant professor who teaches media and popular culture at the University of Minnesota, said she thinks people online tend to become outraged at sexuality in general, and may often miss the point entirely in the midst of their outrage. 

“I think people are looking at Sabrina Carpenter, looking at Sydney Sweeney, and they’re seeing women who are very sexually empowered, who are not apologizing for that, and that’s what’s offending them,” DeFoster said. “I don’t think that’s a valid thing to be upset about. I think there are more complicated gender and sexual dynamics here that we could interrogate.”

Charles Kronengold, a professor of cultural studies and comparative literature at the University, said part of the outrage can be attributed to a disconnect in media literacy online. 

“I worry about whether that whole register of satire, illusion, any kind of self-conscious pointing to one’s own stardom,” Kronengold said. “Any clear sense that you’re addressing one audience in one way, but another audience in a different way, a lot of that stuff is key to media literacy, and does seem to be slipping away.”

Does it help Carpenter’s sales that she is a sex symbol? Absolutely. 

Does this fact cancel out any genuine artistic merit or satire she puts out? Not at all. 

Her status as a sex symbol can provide additional context and grounds for potential subversion. 

What does it say about us that an album with a lead single depicting men as dumb or shallow is going above all of our heads because we only see a pretty blonde girl? 

Carpenter is not some great feminist or generational songwriting talent. Her position as a lightning rod for alarmist discourse may inadvertently turn this otherwise expected, and somewhat derivative, album rollout into some kind of metatextual masterpiece. 

It’s not up to the artist to control all possible interpretations of their work.

Even Sweeney’s more blatant attempt to make a buck off the millions of men who lust after her and promote herself as a sex symbol still isn’t uncritical or unnuanced. 

Sweeney has spoken extensively on her relationship with the press and the public’s relationship to her body specifically. The idea for the ad campaign in which she sells her bathwater in the form of a soap stems from public reactions to a previous ad for Dr. Squatch that garnered significant attention. People even specifically asked for the very thing she’s selling now. 

“When your fans start asking for your bathwater, you can either ignore it or turn it into a bar of Dr. Squatch soap,” Sweeney said in a press release. 

She’s quite literally laughing her way to the bank, and turning a profit off the men who objectify her. In a world of far more blatant appeals to men, why is it this, of all things, that’s causing such outrage?

In our attention economy, we should place mind over matter. Our anger at these women is misdirected and unproductive. We’re acting as if they don’t have entire teams of professionals and executives behind them. 

Kronengold said even the most well-intentioned and effective satire loses a lot of its punch when these images are created and distributed by major corporations to sell to us. 

“It’s one thing for these women to be doing it,” Kronengold said. “But once it’s also Unilever doing it, it doesn’t seem so cute and edgy.” 

We are having an astounding amount of difficulty parsing genuine satire and self-aware debasement from classic Hollywood cash grabs. More importantly, these two things can be true at once, and all of these intentions and interpretations can coexist in a singular advertisement or body of work. 

The confluence of self-awareness, satire and the male gaze for profit here is complex, nuanced and nearly completely irrelevant. Why are we feeding the fire with our hard-earned money and taking time out of our day to stoke the flames?

We deserve better feminists, but we also deserve better critical thought as a whole. We aren’t looking in the right places.

Blonde bombshells like Sydney Sweeney and Sabrina Carpenter are supposedly appealing to the male gaze to make money, self-awarely commenting on their public personas and media treatment. This is ruffling feathers, but why now? 

Our collective fixation, as well as our loud and wrong commentary on the recent public actions of these two women, illustrates our staggering media illiteracy and misunderstanding of satire. Something’s just not clicking. 

If it’s the return to bro-culture or overtly male-gazey advertising we’re truly concerned about, we’re picking the wrong targets for our ire. 

Why is it that we are more offended by Carpenter’s tongue-in-cheek cover art for her upcoming album “Man’s Best Friend,” and its lead single “Manchild,” than we were about the return of the Carl’s Jr. girl, as embodied by Alix Earle? The latter is a far more blatant appeal to men, and objectifies Earle to a far greater extent than Carpenter in her album’s cover. 

Why are we surprised by Sweeney’s recent Dr. Squatch campaign selling soap flavored with her own bathwater after we saw a year of “Saltburn” bathwater memes, and when she explicitly stated the bulk of her income stems from brand deals and advertisements? 

What just seems like a smart PR move on her part is turning into something much bigger than it needs to be. 

Using these women as lightning rods for outrage won’t propel the women’s movement any further, and it’s clear with any amount of deconstruction that there are layers of irony, self-awareness and satire to what they’re doing. 

Yet, they’re receiving significantly more backlash than far more blatant, sinister or simplistic objectifications of women. 

The holes in the logic behind the criticisms of these public figures deconstruct so easily that it’s made abundantly clear something isn’t clicking for consumers. Whether or not the half-baked satire or self-awareness lands is more or less irrelevant. It’s not as if they’re truly subversive. 

If critics’ argument is that they’re receiving more outrage because of how mainstream they are, further spotlighting them as scapegoats won’t help. By doing this, we force them to double down or backtrack for the sake of their reputations.  

This doesn’t help tackle the causes of our discomfort on the topics of female sexuality, advertising or objectification. 

Ruth DeFoster, an assistant professor who teaches media and popular culture at the University of Minnesota, said she thinks people online tend to become outraged at sexuality in general, and may often miss the point entirely in the midst of their outrage. 

“I think people are looking at Sabrina Carpenter, looking at Sydney Sweeney, and they’re seeing women who are very sexually empowered, who are not apologizing for that, and that’s what’s offending them,” DeFoster said. “I don’t think that’s a valid thing to be upset about. I think there are more complicated gender and sexual dynamics here that we could interrogate.”

Charles Kronengold, a professor of cultural studies and comparative literature at the University, said part of the outrage can be attributed to a disconnect in media literacy online. 

“I worry about whether that whole register of satire, illusion, any kind of self-conscious pointing to one’s own stardom,” Kronengold said. “Any clear sense that you’re addressing one audience in one way, but another audience in a different way, a lot of that stuff is key to media literacy, and does seem to be slipping away.”

Does it help Carpenter’s sales that she is a sex symbol? Absolutely. 

Does this fact cancel out any genuine artistic merit or satire she puts out? Not at all. 

Her status as a sex symbol can provide additional context and grounds for potential subversion. 

What does it say about us that an album with a lead single depicting men as dumb or shallow is going above all of our heads because we only see a pretty blonde girl? 

Carpenter is not some great feminist or generational songwriting talent. Her position as a lightning rod for alarmist discourse may inadvertently turn this otherwise expected, and somewhat derivative, album rollout into some kind of metatextual masterpiece. 

It’s not up to the artist to control all possible interpretations of their work.

Even Sweeney’s more blatant attempt to make a buck off the millions of men who lust after her and promote herself as a sex symbol still isn’t uncritical or unnuanced. 

Sweeney has spoken extensively on her relationship with the press and the public’s relationship to her body specifically. The idea for the ad campaign in which she sells her bathwater in the form of a soap stems from public reactions to a previous ad for Dr. Squatch that garnered significant attention. People even specifically asked for the very thing she’s selling now. 

“When your fans start asking for your bathwater, you can either ignore it or turn it into a bar of Dr. Squatch soap,” Sweeney said in a press release. 

She’s quite literally laughing her way to the bank, and turning a profit off the men who objectify her. In a world of far more blatant appeals to men, why is it this, of all things, that’s causing such outrage?

In our attention economy, we should place mind over matter. Our anger at these women is misdirected and unproductive. We’re acting as if they don’t have entire teams of professionals and executives behind them. 

Kronengold said even the most well-intentioned and effective satire loses a lot of its punch when these images are created and distributed by major corporations to sell to us. 

“It’s one thing for these women to be doing it,” Kronengold said. “But once it’s also Unilever doing it, it doesn’t seem so cute and edgy.” 

We are having an astounding amount of difficulty parsing genuine satire and self-aware debasement from classic Hollywood cash grabs. More importantly, these two things can be true at once, and all of these intentions and interpretations can coexist in a singular advertisement or body of work. 

The confluence of self-awareness, satire and the male gaze for profit here is complex, nuanced and nearly completely irrelevant. Why are we feeding the fire with our hard-earned money and taking time out of our day to stoke the flames?

We deserve better feminists, but we also deserve better critical thought as a whole. We aren’t looking in the right places.

Blonde bombshells like Sydney Sweeney and Sabrina Carpenter are supposedly appealing to the male gaze to make money, self-awarely commenting on their public personas and media treatment. This is ruffling feathers, but why now? 

Our collective fixation, as well as our loud and wrong commentary on the recent public actions of these two women, illustrates our staggering media illiteracy and misunderstanding of satire. Something’s just not clicking. 

If it’s the return to bro-culture or overtly male-gazey advertising we’re truly concerned about, we’re picking the wrong targets for our ire. 

Why is it that we are more offended by Carpenter’s tongue-in-cheek cover art for her upcoming album “Man’s Best Friend,” and its lead single “Manchild,” than we were about the return of the Carl’s Jr. girl, as embodied by Alix Earle? The latter is a far more blatant appeal to men, and objectifies Earle to a far greater extent than Carpenter in her album’s cover. 

Why are we surprised by Sweeney’s recent Dr. Squatch campaign selling soap flavored with her own bathwater after we saw a year of “Saltburn” bathwater memes, and when she explicitly stated the bulk of her income stems from brand deals and advertisements? 

What just seems like a smart PR move on her part is turning into something much bigger than it needs to be. 

Using these women as lightning rods for outrage won’t propel the women’s movement any further, and it’s clear with any amount of deconstruction that there are layers of irony, self-awareness and satire to what they’re doing. 

Yet, they’re receiving significantly more backlash than far more blatant, sinister or simplistic objectifications of women. 

The holes in the logic behind the criticisms of these public figures deconstruct so easily that it’s made abundantly clear something isn’t clicking for consumers. Whether or not the half-baked satire or self-awareness lands is more or less irrelevant. It’s not as if they’re truly subversive. 

If critics’ argument is that they’re receiving more outrage because of how mainstream they are, further spotlighting them as scapegoats won’t help. By doing this, we force them to double down or backtrack for the sake of their reputations.  

This doesn’t help tackle the causes of our discomfort on the topics of female sexuality, advertising or objectification. 

Ruth DeFoster, an assistant professor who teaches media and popular culture at the University of Minnesota, said she thinks people online tend to become outraged at sexuality in general, and may often miss the point entirely in the midst of their outrage. 

“I think people are looking at Sabrina Carpenter, looking at Sydney Sweeney, and they’re seeing women who are very sexually empowered, who are not apologizing for that, and that’s what’s offending them,” DeFoster said. “I don’t think that’s a valid thing to be upset about. I think there are more complicated gender and sexual dynamics here that we could interrogate.”

Charles Kronengold, a professor of cultural studies and comparative literature at the University, said part of the outrage can be attributed to a disconnect in media literacy online. 

“I worry about whether that whole register of satire, illusion, any kind of self-conscious pointing to one’s own stardom,” Kronengold said. “Any clear sense that you’re addressing one audience in one way, but another audience in a different way, a lot of that stuff is key to media literacy, and does seem to be slipping away.”

Does it help Carpenter’s sales that she is a sex symbol? Absolutely. 

Does this fact cancel out any genuine artistic merit or satire she puts out? Not at all. 

Her status as a sex symbol can provide additional context and grounds for potential subversion. 

What does it say about us that an album with a lead single depicting men as dumb or shallow is going above all of our heads because we only see a pretty blonde girl? 

Carpenter is not some great feminist or generational songwriting talent. Her position as a lightning rod for alarmist discourse may inadvertently turn this otherwise expected, and somewhat derivative, album rollout into some kind of metatextual masterpiece. 

It’s not up to the artist to control all possible interpretations of their work.

Even Sweeney’s more blatant attempt to make a buck off the millions of men who lust after her and promote herself as a sex symbol still isn’t uncritical or unnuanced. 

Sweeney has spoken extensively on her relationship with the press and the public’s relationship to her body specifically. The idea for the ad campaign in which she sells her bathwater in the form of a soap stems from public reactions to a previous ad for Dr. Squatch that garnered significant attention. People even specifically asked for the very thing she’s selling now. 

“When your fans start asking for your bathwater, you can either ignore it or turn it into a bar of Dr. Squatch soap,” Sweeney said in a press release. 

She’s quite literally laughing her way to the bank, and turning a profit off the men who objectify her. In a world of far more blatant appeals to men, why is it this, of all things, that’s causing such outrage?

In our attention economy, we should place mind over matter. Our anger at these women is misdirected and unproductive. We’re acting as if they don’t have entire teams of professionals and executives behind them. 

Kronengold said even the most well-intentioned and effective satire loses a lot of its punch when these images are created and distributed by major corporations to sell to us. 

“It’s one thing for these women to be doing it,” Kronengold said. “But once it’s also Unilever doing it, it doesn’t seem so cute and edgy.” 

We are having an astounding amount of difficulty parsing genuine satire and self-aware debasement from classic Hollywood cash grabs. More importantly, these two things can be true at once, and all of these intentions and interpretations can coexist in a singular advertisement or body of work. 

The confluence of self-awareness, satire and the male gaze for profit here is complex, nuanced and nearly completely irrelevant. Why are we feeding the fire with our hard-earned money and taking time out of our day to stoke the flames?

We deserve better feminists, but we also deserve better critical thought as a whole. We aren’t looking in the right places.

Much has already been said about coming of age online. We’re witnessing firsthand the large-scale social experiment that is the internet and the implications of its benefits and drawbacks, particularly on those maturing alongside it. 

There’s no shortage of moral panic around the assumption of different gender, mental health, non-human identities and labels young people hold, and they only increase as social media becomes more entrenched in our lives.

There seems to be a disconnect between generations, specifically between social and traditional media in the reconfiguration of the trends and movements shaping 21st century personhood. 

Generations raised by the internet are navigating an entirely new reality. As such, we should act accordingly. 

The high volume of young people who use social media platforms is shaping the narratives that inform a large sector of our pop culture and psychology. At the same time, social media continues to shape how young people develop.

Take, for example, the increase of therapy-speak and self-diagnosis. Social media and the widespread sharing of information online has been a great democratizing force. However, with equal access and opportunity to publish, not everyone sharing their perspective is necessarily qualified to do so. 

Liza Meredith, a licensed psychologist and professor at the University of Minnesota, said one common pitfall young people experience online is their tendency to conflate and over-identify with complex identities, like mental health diagnoses. 

“Young people are really prone to doing a lot of social comparisons,” Meredith said. “They may judge themselves and create an idea of themselves in relation to what they’re seeing online.” 

All of this comes from a fairly universal human need to feel understood and, in some ways, validated. 

We crave the ability to definitively know that others out there have commonalities with even some of our most niche or frowned-upon proclivities. We want to know there is a name and a reason for our experiences when not everything in life can be explained under a label or categorization. Even when effectively attributed, a label is not all-encompassing. 

On the other hand, in a country where mental healthcare can be inaccessible and somewhat elusive, this line of thinking can open doors for legitimate intervention. 

The internet is truly a double-edged sword. It’s a new dimension, one that has its own governing principles, languages and social norms. 

It’s not that the internet is making young people more susceptible to certain stages of exploration. Instead, it’s making them more vulnerable to over-identifying and labeling those stages of exploration. Misattribution is the real danger here. It’s clear these people know how to identify their feelings. 

Meredith said social media’s appeal, especially to young people, is, at least in part, rooted in its potential for enrichment and connection. 

“I think young people use social media for a variety of reasons,” Meredith said. “Part of it might be entertainment, another part of it might be to connect with friends, and I think another reason is to explore themselves and their interests and their identity.”

While social media is a tool for enrichment and discovery, it doesn’t always explore the nuances that constitute or define specific identities, or explain why people choose them. 

Social media is not making young people inherently different from previous generations. It introduced a completely different social and cultural environment for young people to contend with, where complex concepts and identities are often flattened in the process. 

This brings us to Therians and furries. 

While Therians are individuals who self-identify as animals, furries are individuals who exhibit an interest in anthropomorphized animals, often creating an original character or fursona to represent themselves in the larger worldbuilding project. 

They identify traits in themselves that are similar to a specific animal, sometimes using this as a method to cope with feelings of alienation from other peers who don’t identify similarly. 

There’s been a number of moral panics related to this. Older generations cry that young people no longer respect any form of legitimate identity, claiming more fluid ideologies led to utter madness, or even perversions. 

It’s somehow less of a leap in logic to believe the ever-elusive smartphone is transforming children into cyborgian, cat people than it is to understand the simple fact that young people, and children in particular, are endlessly curious.  

When deconstructed, though, it’s obvious these children just want to play. 

The impulse to run around outside on all fours and meow, or pretend to be a cat, is something children are known to do. Older generations put labels on this behavior, whether it be for their comprehension, or the more general comprehension of the World Wide Web. 

These identities aren’t invalid simply because they’ve been propagated online, or don’t necessarily fully translate in real life. They serve their purposes, which are to build community online. In addition, we should recognize that people grow and change, especially in developmental years. Labels or identifications that aren’t permanent are no less valuable or real. 

Jodi Dworkin, a professor and extension specialist of family social science at the University, said the internet can be a space to explore and contend with ideas young people may not have access to or awareness of in their daily lives. Her research shows young people are very intentional in their internet usage.  

“I think there’s lots of ways if young people don’t have space in their real lives to explore different things,” Dworkin said. “The internet and social media can provide really important avenues to help dedication to do that.”

We’re getting it all wrong, from all sides of the debate. 

When we approach this delicate subject matter with empathy, it becomes abundantly clear that we need to give these young people, and ourselves, a grace period. 

Generations Z and Alpha are maturing while social media is in its infancy and have unwittingly been made into test-subjects.

Generation Z doesn’t “dream of labor.” We emphasize the importance of taking time off and building a healthier work-life balance. 

Amid reimagining our relationships to labor and meritocracy, young women in particular fantasize about unrealistic, dynastic wealth.

Whether it be the glorification of the old money aesthetic, our obsession over Sofia Richie’s quietly luxurious wedding or the cultural obsession with nepo babies, it’s become evident that pop culture is having a love affair with the elites. 

Oftentimes, this obsession comes in the form of mimicry and aspiration. We indulge in tips on how to get the old money or quiet luxury look and post about how we could be the perfect nepo baby if we’d so happened to be born under the right circumstances. 

In all of this wishful thinking, there’s the illusory thought that we could also achieve any of it. We convince ourselves that by ironing lapels, or buying the right button-up blouse that we can be legitimized, or revered. 

We don’t valorize hard, back-breaking work as something to bring us up into the echelons of high society. While the underdog, rags-to-riches and bootstraps narratives still register, they aren’t what we envision as appealing or tenable paths. 

Meritocracy is losing its grip on us, and for good reason. 

The United States has comparably less class mobility than other developed nations, despite what the “American Dream” might have us think. The odds that one may achieve social mobility diminish with age, while the wealth gap grows wider. 

Because meritocracy feels like less of an appealing option, our generation is looking for opportunities to get rich quickly. This is not necessarily because the value of a hard day’s work is lost on us, but because it doesn’t always feel like a fair tradeoff. 

Jordyn Wald, a sociology PhD student at the University of Minnesota, said this flagrant and desperate aspiration for power reflects the erosion of our belief in meritocracy. 

“The appeal of old money increases, not as a belief in fairness, but as an acknowledgement of how power actually works,” Wald said.

A darker side to this rejection is the way social media convinces young women to abandon their autonomy in their aspiration to class mobility. This reinforces the antiquated idea that the only way for women to attain a better station in life is to subscribe to a life of dependency or exploit one’s privacy. 

Online influencers are promoting hypergamous dating, suggesting people, particularly women, should date “up” to secure their futures. As tradwife influencers promote their supposedly easy-breezy stay-at-home lifestyles, the housewife ideal, too, has made a resurgence. 

We’ve been tricked into lamenting our autonomy, as if women were ever just free agents who are now forced to earn a living. We’re forgetting our history. The cult of domesticity got its name for a reason. 

Wald said the idea of hypergamy serves as a fairytale narrative. The belief that a wealthy man will alleviate all problems feels comforting and certain. 

“It’s kind of this narrative that tells women that it is possible if you are the right woman and you catch the right man’s attention,” Wald said. “I think of TikTok and other platforms that also romanticize these gender dimensions.” 

It’s a reassuring, antiquated narrative that can seem stable in the precarity that our generation faces in the wake of economic pressures. 

However, we aren’t just trying to find our footing by looking to the past. The search for quick fixes for our meritocracy problem knows no bounds. 

Having descended from the 21st century idea of being famous for being famous, influencers are promoting influencer marketing as a lucrative, easy way to make money quickly. 

That’s the tame end of the continuum. Our generation’s rejection of meritocracy introduced new ways young women are encouraged to make themselves dependent on men in the name of financial security. 

Influencers’ promotions of platforms like OnlyFans and sugar daddy websites, for instance, are rooted in a new internet economy and supposedly more progressive views toward personal autonomy.

However, these lines of work can be incredibly exploitative and have negative effects, both internally and externally. 

Young women aren’t alone in the search for easy money. Young men fall into the traps of pyramid schemes, online courses and other scams promoting the same idea of effortless money-making. 

Young women are more vulnerable, though, and quite frankly have a lot more to lose. 

American women only gained the ability to hold credit cards in their own names in 1974. 

Many of our grandmothers and mothers fought and protested for their dream of true freedom and independence. It’s a tragedy that many feel the need to abandon the financial freedom generations before us fought for. 

This is a nuanced issue, and every career has its pros and cons. 

However, when lifestyles with high probabilities for exploitation, failure or loss of autonomy are being flattened to such a propagandistic degree, the risks must be addressed. 

There wasn’t always a better way. We shouldn’t take our freedom for granted.

Generation Z doesn’t “dream of labor.” We emphasize the importance of taking time off and building a healthier work-life balance. 

Amid reimagining our relationships to labor and meritocracy, young women in particular fantasize about unrealistic, dynastic wealth.

Whether it be the glorification of the old money aesthetic, our obsession over Sofia Richie’s quietly luxurious wedding or the cultural obsession with nepo babies, it’s become evident that pop culture is having a love affair with the elites. 

Oftentimes, this obsession comes in the form of mimicry and aspiration. We indulge in tips on how to get the old money or quiet luxury look and post about how we could be the perfect nepo baby if we’d so happened to be born under the right circumstances. 

In all of this wishful thinking, there’s the illusory thought that we could also achieve any of it. We convince ourselves that by ironing lapels, or buying the right button-up blouse that we can be legitimized, or revered. 

We don’t valorize hard, back-breaking work as something to bring us up into the echelons of high society. While the underdog, rags-to-riches and bootstraps narratives still register, they aren’t what we envision as appealing or tenable paths. 

Meritocracy is losing its grip on us, and for good reason. 

The United States has comparably less class mobility than other developed nations, despite what the “American Dream” might have us think. The odds that one may achieve social mobility diminish with age, while the wealth gap grows wider. 

Because meritocracy feels like less of an appealing option, our generation is looking for opportunities to get rich quickly. This is not necessarily because the value of a hard day’s work is lost on us, but because it doesn’t always feel like a fair tradeoff. 

Jordyn Wald, a sociology PhD student at the University of Minnesota, said this flagrant and desperate aspiration for power reflects the erosion of our belief in meritocracy. 

“The appeal of old money increases, not as a belief in fairness, but as an acknowledgement of how power actually works,” Wald said.

A darker side to this rejection is the way social media convinces young women to abandon their autonomy in their aspiration to class mobility. This reinforces the antiquated idea that the only way for women to attain a better station in life is to subscribe to a life of dependency or exploit one’s privacy. 

Online influencers are promoting hypergamous dating, suggesting people, particularly women, should date “up” to secure their futures. As tradwife influencers promote their supposedly easy-breezy stay-at-home lifestyles, the housewife ideal, too, has made a resurgence. 

We’ve been tricked into lamenting our autonomy, as if women were ever just free agents who are now forced to earn a living. We’re forgetting our history. The cult of domesticity got its name for a reason. 

Wald said the idea of hypergamy serves as a fairytale narrative. The belief that a wealthy man will alleviate all problems feels comforting and certain. 

“It’s kind of this narrative that tells women that it is possible if you are the right woman and you catch the right man’s attention,” Wald said. “I think of TikTok and other platforms that also romanticize these gender dimensions.” 

It’s a reassuring, antiquated narrative that can seem stable in the precarity that our generation faces in the wake of economic pressures. 

However, we aren’t just trying to find our footing by looking to the past. The search for quick fixes for our meritocracy problem knows no bounds. 

Having descended from the 21st century idea of being famous for being famous, influencers are promoting influencer marketing as a lucrative, easy way to make money quickly. 

That’s the tame end of the continuum. Our generation’s rejection of meritocracy introduced new ways young women are encouraged to make themselves dependent on men in the name of financial security. 

Influencers’ promotions of platforms like OnlyFans and sugar daddy websites, for instance, are rooted in a new internet economy and supposedly more progressive views toward personal autonomy.

However, these lines of work can be incredibly exploitative and have negative effects, both internally and externally. 

Young women aren’t alone in the search for easy money. Young men fall into the traps of pyramid schemes, online courses and other scams promoting the same idea of effortless money-making. 

Young women are more vulnerable, though, and quite frankly have a lot more to lose. 

American women only gained the ability to hold credit cards in their own names in 1974. 

Many of our grandmothers and mothers fought and protested for their dream of true freedom and independence. It’s a tragedy that many feel the need to abandon the financial freedom generations before us fought for. 

This is a nuanced issue, and every career has its pros and cons. 

However, when lifestyles with high probabilities for exploitation, failure or loss of autonomy are being flattened to such a propagandistic degree, the risks must be addressed. 

There wasn’t always a better way. We shouldn’t take our freedom for granted.