So, this morning I was at a track day. Martin got to drive round a track in five different super cars. While I was stood spectating, there was a man stood next to me, with his young daughter sat on his shoulders. I would have said she was six years old. She was asking him questions about the different cars, and said she liked a Ferrari, her father said to her:

‘When you’re older, and a man asks you on a date, check he is rich, and then you can have a car like that, and I won’t have to pay for your wedding’

As first I chuckled to myself, and then I thought about it. What sort of lesson is he teaching that young child. You can only have a nice car if a wealthy man buys it for you?

What he should be teaching his daughter is, if you work really hard and save your money, maybe one day you can buy yourself a car like that. Not rely on someone to buy it for you.

This reminded me of a something Mark Zuckerberg wrote on a comment on Facebook. A woman wrote on one of his Facebook posts that she tells her Grand daughters to date the nerd in school, his response was as follows:

‘Even better would be to encourage them to *be* the nerd in their school so they can be the next successful inventor’

The more I thought about it the more annoyed I became. Movies and TV series are the same, a recurring theme is a woman can’t be happy until she has a man by her side, a ‘prince charming’ to save her from the outside world. Rather than learning how to survive and thrive by themselves.

We live in a generation where people’s wealth is flaunted by the use of social media, I mean they have made a TV series based on rich kids on Instagram! These young adults are able to buy watches worth hundreds of thousands of pounds and fly on private jets because their family’s are rich, these are the types of people impressionable children are watching, and aspire to become.

I can’t think of any real life programmes which show young successful women in business, can you? About the daily struggles they face, how they have overcome obstacles to become the best in their field.

Are we really happy that young girls’ choice of role models, are singers or reality ‘stars’?

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section.