By: Emily Ao

Double standards have always existed in the world. Despite living in a modern era, the double standards that have been set beforehand still remain.

Women are more constantly judged by the media, including weight shaming and other ignorant accusations. Men are far less criticized, and this is especially demonstrated in the Olympics, where women can’t escape body shaming from society. In fact, recently, Olympic rugby athlete Ilona Maher had to retaliate against an inappropriate comment from a viewer, MSN reports.

Society also watches and enjoys men’s sports more than women’s. Women’s sports are seen as less professional and inferior compared to men’s. In reality, a sport is a sport, and the only difference is the people playing, so why is there such a division between the enjoyment of men’s sports vs. women’s? To further consolidate these double standards, users on popular web discussion site Reddit claim that they enjoy men’s sports more solely because “men’s sports have a faster pace and more impressive goals or points.”

However, not all double standards have to concern gender. Some are present in everyday settings like the educational environment. “Smarter” students, or students that typically do well in school, are expected to do well based on previous accomplishments.

However, if there was a new lesson, and such students didn’t learn as quickly, teachers would tend to be extremely frustrated. This is because the teacher believes that the student should understand the material already (even if it’s their first time). However, if there were another student, one that doesn’t usually do well in school, the teacher would show more patience and desire to teach the latter. This is because the teacher has the impression that this student needs extra support. But aren’t they both students? They’re both learning the lesson for the first time, so they should be given similar amounts of attention.

All in all, double standards are essentially built up by society. They’re nothing but toxic realities that society has created, whether unknowingly or purposely. Double standards set unrealistic standards and degrade the worth of parties involved. Instead, people should be criticized fairly, without race, sexuality, gender, or intelligence being factors towards unfair treatment.