America’s Next Top Model Does Politics and The Youth Vote

America’s Next Top Model has joined the bandwagon in pushing the youth vote (Seventeen Magazine also joined the pop culture bandwagon by asking the girls of The Hills to vote. Both sadly and happily, some girls did decide to vote based on the pop culture “icons”). During the season premiere of the show, not only did they do ‘politics’ by accepting a transgendered woman (who, by the way, I think is gorgeous), they also centered the photo shoot around issues that are important to the upcoming election, such as privacy, environment, education, etc. After the shoot, the judges– Tyra in particular– encouraged the young women as well as the audience to vote. The voting encouragement was finished by telling the audience they could register via CW’s website.

The thing that got me the most in this episode was the explanation that the youth are more empowered in this election, more passionate than ever before. I could be misremembering, but didn’t that say that four years ago? Every year that there is a major election, people claim that the youth are more passionate, but every year, the majority of people do not seem to vote. Even my own roommate doesn’t vote. Now it could be they just don’t want to, can’t see just yet how it will affect them (or they don’t dislike a candidate enough to cast a ballot and not vote for that candidate), but for whatever reason, a lot of the youth of legal voting age– as we hear every election, it seems– do not cast their decisions.

On college campuses, for the most part you’d think that would not be the case. There are a ton of political groups on campus, such as Republicans, Democrats, even a Pro-Life group. But just because someone is in college does not mean that they are either political or care enough to vote. And just because someone is young does not make them in college, though many still care to vote.

There are several reasons not to vote, such as the corruption in the government and, as my roommate just explained, the way the whole system is set up. While I still vote, I am not a fan of the electoral college, and it’s the reason why she doesn’t vote. Where we live, in the Midwest, we don’t have much of a say in an influence. I know the whole idea of “Every Vote Counts, one vote can make or break an election.” But let’s be honest. When your state has like 3 electoral votes, and California, Texas, New York, and Florida have a shit ton, the whole defeatest idea of “why even bother” comes into play, and rightly so. While I still believe that people should vote, that it can sometimes give a personal satisfaction, I do understand that idea. However, as I have grown up in a Midwestern Swing State, I also understand how voting is important.

It is really a personal decision and the entire system of voting really needs to be re-examined and the kinks worked out. One thing that does bug me is the fact that voting generally takes place during work hours unless you go later or earlier. And when you’re a sleep deprived single parent (or even a college student like some of my friends who seriously have classes/activities for 12+ hours straight), voting isn’t always feasible, no matter how important it is to you. And yes, I know about absentee voting, as I am a registered absentee voter myself, but not every knows enough about how to register and, as the government can be, it can become intimidating to try to figure it out. Plus, let’s face it. A lot of websites (governments, colleges, etc) are hard to navigate at times and the Google search always turns up things that have absolutely nothing to do with the initial search.

Essentially, as a populace, we need to re-examine the way our government works, weed out ideologies and push for effective and possible ways to elect governmental officials, as well as educate ourselves and others in the multitude of ways to vote in order to allow as many people as possible to voice their opinions and cast their vote.

Finally, while I do believe it’s important to get the youth to vote, it does get annoying to see how our society has become one so influenced by pop culture. Using pop culture to encourage and influence people has both it’s benefits and doubts, though, ideally, it would be nice if they did more than give a link. Maybe explaining why it’s important, what issues directly effect youth, as well as how to register and how absentee voting works would be a bit more beneficial. I know some pop culture sources do do this, but it would be nice to see more.

And let’s face it: Some people will never vote, no matter how much they are encouraged.