Trending Tuesdays

Happy Tuesday. Happy Tuesday. Hi, everyone. Yeah, it's Tuesday. It is trending Tuesday with girls mentorship. That's us, girls. I've been wearing this Apple Watch, and I get notifications. And then I was like, girls mentorship is going live in ten minutes. And that's us. Oh, that's me. That's you. If you don't know who me and you is, my name is Mary. This is my best friend and business partner, Jill, and we own a company called Girls Mentorship, where we teach life and personal development skills to teen and tween girls.

And if you are not a teen and tween girl, that is a okay, because most of what we teach pertains to you as well. We just happen to do it in such a way that it really speaks to the teen and tween version of who we once were. Dang Straight junk food junkie has joined the chat. What is going on? Junk food junkie, who are you bringing with you today to the chat? We can't wait to see who. Luke. Luke, Luke, Luke. What's up? So on Tuesdays, we talk about trends trending Tuesdays, because it's really important for us as community members, all of us in the Cadre sphere, to understand what some of the things that are going on in the world what are some of the things that are going on in the world that our kids are involved in.

So we know how to approach them. So we know how to talk to them about it. So we just know how to handle certain conversations that may or may not come up. And, y'all, it's been a big, big, big week. April 19, Taylor Swift released her newest CD, her newest discography. I saw a CD. I did. You could buy it in a CD, I bet. And I bet you know who's tuning in is really appreciating the fact that we threw out the word CD. You know what? I pulled out some CDs the other day and listened to them. I did. I scream.

I already took a picture for Joe. I know. I was like, man, I wish I would have had. I wish I would have kept my, you know, the binder of just CDs that. That we made. But I don't know what I did with them. Probably threw them away. Probably threw them away. Anyways, that's besides the point. You might bring in it back. You might not be a Taylor Swift fan. You might be a raving Taylor Swift fan. That literally is neither here nor there for what we're going to talk about in terms of what is trending around Taylor Swift and where we're going to take it.

So what we know about Taylor Swift is her career has literally spanned the better part of now, about 20 years. She and I are the same age. I think she's a year younger than me. I'm 36. She's 35. She really started around 15. Her first album came out when I was a freshman in college, which was 2006. And I think what's cool about her career is that she has fans that are literally five years old all the way to 85 years old. Most artists can't really hold more than one generation at a time just because the difference in generations is so vast.

So what's interesting about her is her reach is really, really big, and her superstardom over the last ten years has grown to exponential proportions. Which brings us to parasocial relationships. What are parasocial relationships? It is a relationship that you deeply connect with watching and being influenced by a celebrity or someone that you admire. So someone that you don't personally know. But as Mary was mentioning, Taylor Swift is a great, great, great example of just people fan girling and fanboying over her.

Her likeliness or her likely likelihood. Her likeness. Her likeness. So who she is as an artist, her songs, her lyrics, just her overall vibe. Her likeness. Now, you can relate this to anyone else that you have ever had, like, this connection with without even knowing that person. So maybe it's an athlete, a sports athlete. Maybe it's a movie star. A movie star. Maybe it's someone in Congress. Maybe it's an artist. So I want you to think about that person that you have totally fanboyed, fangirled in your life, and drop it in the chat for us.

So Mary and I can just kind of get a feel. Junk food junkie. Maybe it's a restaurant order since it's taco Tuesday. Or Luke, drop in the chat, who you have, have been inspired by or aspired to be. So along those lines, drop it in the chat so we can see who you guys are connecting with. Okay, so we're not saying a parasocial relationship is a bad thing, but what we're noticing is with the stardom and with the quick access to technology and the back and forth that can happen around opinions, specifically around her new album, Drop, which happened on April 19, it can get a little dicey when people have different opinions about certain things.

When people get so attached to someone that they don't even know, what happens with her fans is they dissect literally every single lyric that she's ever written to try to figure out who it's written about, what happened in her life with it. They really try to decode her life. And when the narrative doesn't fit the narrative that they came up with in their own head is when we start to get into dangerous waters. She's got a lot of stalkers for this reason. We see a lot of people fawning over her, having really emotional breakdowns over her.

And it's not just her. As Jill just pointed out, Cal Ripken is a great example. I don't think he ever missed a baseball game. And Ray Lewis, I mean, come on, right? That man talks about determination and discipline like nobody I've ever heard before. So it gets into dangerous territory when we really feel like we know this person and we have an actual real life relationship with them. And I related it to Jill earlier in a smaller way, saying, I watched a TikTok earlier of a woman who documented a day in the life, and her day in the life was literally saying, I saw one of my favorite influencers post about a Gilmore girl's blanket that was for sale at TJ Maxx, and she proceeded to go to eight different TJ Maxx's.

Her day consisted of seeing someone that she think she knows that she has a relationship via online, and spending her entire day trying to find something that her favorite person online recommended that she finds, which meant she literally drove around from eight different TJ Maxx locations. Which I think is crazy. But if you're a parent or a community member or an aunt or an uncle, and you're seeing your children respond and react in this way to some of their favorite, favorite people, it might be a really good time to sit down with them and talk about healthy boundaries when it comes to who they idolize and how or why their idolization of this person can be really detrimental to their mental health.

Well, and I want to also say, on the flip side of idolizing someone, someone could despise someone. So, Jungkook junkie, you said that you were connecting with Taylor Swift until the whole NFL thing, and Travis, Kelsey. And you're not alone in that, 100%. I know a lot of people felt that way about her as well. Like that, you know, the football spotlight was really highlighting their relationship. Yada, yada. But I have a ten year old, and he likes to be very opposing on the things that mom and dad like.

So say I do vocal, right? Say I do like Taylor Swift and I do. And I'm very vocal about how she inspires me and what I like about her and my ten year old's like, she's stupid. I, like, you know, can't see. Can't see the good. He might not. I don't need him or expect him to like her, but what in her is triggering him enough to, like, really tear her down when I'm like, you don't really even know any of the facts, so. And I know if that is what he's saying around me, what is he saying around friends?

So here's the thing. If there, if we're talking about this around our friends, and then they're gonna, like, you know, all band together. Cause that's what kids feed the fire. They feed the fire. What happens if it starts to become someone that isn't a celebrity, isn't a sports athlete, and it starts to become someone in their circle or they're talking about someone at their school or whatever it may, we're in, like, healthy attachment, unhealthy attachment. This is what parasocial relationships really lead to.

Oh, sorry. I thought you were. That was a great little chime in. So all of that to say, I think there's two sides to the story is, of course, allowing someone else to have different opinions and express their beliefs and how they feel, but in a healthy dialogue, because it starts to get gross when someone is just ripping on somebody, when someone else has, like, a deep connection to them. So there, I think there's a beautiful balance of appreciating opposing perspectives and, and opinions in, in these type of relationships.

On the opposite end of that spectrum, it also starts to get gross when somebody is defending somebody that they absolutely are fangirling over, that they do not know. So there are, there are, like I said, there needs to be a healthy dialogue around boundaries and the importance that somebody has in your life and the lengths in which you're willing to go, especially because we have such rapid a and vapid access to the Internet and can put our opinions out there any time of day and have a dialogue, healthy or unhealthy, with anyone we want opposing or together.

So I just, it felt like a good time to talk about this because it's not just Taylor Swift that we're doing this with because of our access to the Internet. We're doing it with a lot of people. We're taking what a lot of people say or how they show up online at face value and finding out that maybe they're not a great person after all or that our values or our morals really don't align. So having conversations with your kids or the kids in your life or even yourself about the healthy separation that needs to happen between you and other people, whether they are in your circle or somebody you don't even know.

Idolization is a really dangerous thing and can lead you to make choices and decisions that you wouldn't necessarily make if that idolization or that veil was not there. And with a developing brain, what we know is that the teen and tween brain really doesn't fully develop in terms of personality traits, making decisions, conflict resolution, that prefrontal cortex, frontal lobe until about 25. So if we're constantly feeding dopamine receptors with certain things and accolades, we're actually doubling those receptors and we're taking the brain we're developing in our teen and tween years right into our adulthood.

So you see those mannerisms and those decisions continue on into adulthood because no one ever had a relationship or a conversation with somebody about why it was important to establish healthy boundaries as well as a healthy identity for who you actually were or who you want to be. Right? There's the mic drop. Yeah. Checking in with yourself. Because sometimes you can compare, like, oh, they have it all. Look at them. They have the girl, they have the car, they have the house. Like, oh, my gosh, their life is so much better than mine.

And then you find out, like, some major bombshell, and then you're like, whoa. Everything that I thought was good in this person, I'm like, wow, okay, maybe. Maybe they're not as good as I thought they were. So it is that comparison trap of making sure that your self identity isn't getting caught up in comparing what you have and what you don't have with these people. And that, you know, if you are adopting certain things from people that these people that you're idolizing have the same morals and values as you have.

Amen. So, with that being said, we're wrapping up our Tuesday livestream schedule. We like to joke that we rounded out as the caboose, the Tuesday trending, trending Tuesday caboose. But we will see you again on Thursday, which is a caretaker day with an incredible lineup on Thursdays. But before that, tune into Wednesday as well. There's a lot of other incredible creators on this app sharing their lived experience, just like we get to share ours. And a lot of incredible people entering the cadres fear on a daily basis that we get to have a healthy dialogue about all of this stuff with hoping to expand our horizons and yours at the same time.

So with that being said, we will catch you on Thursday. We hope you have a beautiful rest of your day, wherever you may be. In this Cadre sphere. In this sphere. In this sphere. And we will see you in a couple of days. Bye, everyone.