Thursday, April 6, 2017

Bilzerian's Bahavior - Through Social Media

Dan Bilzerian is the walking image of stereotypical tough guy. His social media is littered in guns, parties and expensive cars. Bilzerian also objectifies women in almost every photo he posts, he can be seen in the middle of a crowd of naked (or almost naked) women all seeming to enjoy his lavish lifestyle. These photos are taken with the “male gaze” in mind, in some videos even zooming in on certain parts of women. This is not only projecting women as sex objects, but also projecting him as the stereotype of the dominant figure. He also has been heavily involved with drugs more than most of his life, so much that he had three heart attacks before the age of 32. Yet he continues to party, drink and play dangerous sports, all while being surrounded by, of course, naked women. This image is not only one that Dan loves himself, but one that many other men aspire to be like. Making men subconsciously belittle women and act like a cocky jock to be more like him. Dan Bilzerian represents and supports many stereotypes including the tough guy and that women are sexual objects only used for pleasure.

On March 8, 2017 Dan Bilzerian posted a photo for International Women’s Day. Of course this seemed a little off for his character, but one could see all was normal when the photo was of him in a hot tub surrounded by five women, some naked, and one woman bending over to be a table that Dan is grabbing food off of. This photo was completed with the caption “It’s International Women’s Day, be thankful, they are good for so many things”. This not only objectifies women but he is literally referring to them as useful for his own sake. They are belittled down to objects that are used for his pleasure. This degrades women in the worst type of way, both physically and subjectively.

Another controversial photo he posted was on July 25, 2015. He explains in the caption that he was trying to tell his parents the amount of “distractions” in his life lately, and that they don’t understand what he means finishing the caption with the hashtag “My Chefs Don’t Judge Me”. The photo is of him eating dinner in a huge house with a girl in her underwear on top of the table trying to… get his attention with her body. This photo does not only make women look like sex objects, but also that they are just “distractions” in Dan’s excessive lifestyle of doing drugs and partying. As well as making him relate to the stereotype that men are above women, so much that women are just a interruption in a man's busy lifestyle. He is also enforcing the stereotype that men don’t cook or clean with just a hashtag explaining that he has cooks and he DOES NOT cook his own food. Of course, if you're a real man, you don’t care about women or cook your own food.
 
The last way Dan Bilzerian objectifies women is on another one of his social media platforms, Snapchat. On March 16, 2017 he put a video of himself on his Snapchat story driving an expensive car while talking about how much he loves the gym. He explains that he loves it because no one asks to take a picture with him, yet sometimes women come up to him and tell him how much they want to have sex with him, he finds it annoying because he is just trying to “get a pump”. This also relates to the last issue of Dan getting frustrated with all of the attractive woman who throw themselves at him. This is just such a burden in his busy schedule of working out and other manly things most would not understand.
Despite all of these things, Dan Bilzerian’s actions have gotten a decent amount of positive attention from the media. So much so that there is a song written about him, the song is called “Dan Bilzerian” by T-Pain. Some of the lyrics of this song include “I get ten Brazilians like i'm Dan Bilzerian”, implying the many women posted all over his social media. Another being “B**** i’m rich as f***” and repeating this over and over impersonating Bilzerian with his money and his expensive lifestyle. This stereotype of men who have a ridiculous amount of money, party like crazy and do a lot of drugs is becoming more accepted in present social media. Mostly because men see ridiculous people like Dan Bilzerian and they think that makes it okay to act this way, when in reality it is just glorifying unacceptable behavior in the media. Songs like the one by T-Pain only put Bilzerian's actions and lifestyle into an even more positive light instead of showing the degrading stereotype he really is.  
The stereotype of Dan Bilzerian is definitely present in other works of culture. In many TV shows or movies there is a male character that loves, yet doesn’t give a crap about, women. While also obsessing over similar things like sports, partying with excessive drinking and luxury cars. This stereotype is one that has been going on since most can remember. In popular musicals like Grease with the character Danny being this common stereotype in a high school scenario or in TV shows like Family Guy with a character named Quagmire who also represents this stereotype in sleeping with different woman every night in adulthood. Although we see these people all over the media, it is very disturbing to know there are actual people like this in real life. This is exactly who Dan Bilzerian is, yet his actions are not seen as too abnormal because people have seen this type of person many times before and fail to realize how ridiculous his actions are.

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