On Friday night, I went to see Uni’s spring play, "Much Ado About Nothing." First of all, for those of you who didn’t see it, you really missed out. It was amazing in all of its Shakespearean glory and the actors were great and so on.

One of its biggest eye-openers for me (besides realizing that I really can’t understand a word of Shakespearean English) was the presence of double standards. Everywhere I turned I found one. I’m pretty sure I missed a few just by being completely lost, but under all of the humor I saw pressures that even today are put on poor unsuspecting teens.

In the play there turned out to be much ado about whether or not someone’s bride-to-be was faithful or not. The poor falsely accused woman was publicly disgraced for having sex before marriage. What bothered me, though, was that for her to not be a “maid” was the worst thing that could ever have happened to her, but if a man had done what she supposedly had he would probably be congratulated.

Today’s society has not improved that situation. If a girl has sex she is usually called all manner of names that aren’t respectable at all, whereas a guy gets a pat on the back and the name of player. Not only that, but guys are encouraged to be as sexually active as possible. The one slight problem is that those kinds of things usually take two people.

Another double standard that was showcased in the play, and one that bothers me less, is that the guy is always supposed to ask the girl out. There’s no denying that if a girl asks a guy out she comes off as a little desperate. Again, there is needless pressure put on each gender to act in a way that is different from the other.

One more that people seem to not notice as much as the others is that in a relationship, the girl is almost always more attractive than the guy. Want proof? Just look at half of the couples in Hollywood. Every guy there has, if any, a drop-dead gorgeous girl on his arm. And let’s face it, not every male in Hollywood is a sex symbol. If a guy is hot, he needs an even hotter girl. Guys who are less fortunate still need a hot girl. And it is that constant pressure to be as hot as possible so that we can be paired off that drives girls to do anything they can to look gorgeous.

Basically, the double standard has a love-hate relationship with everyone in the world. Some of them favor one group, some the other; either way they do more harm than good, and I would almost be happy to get rid of them all. Maybe just the ones that don’t favor me …