Congratulations on your masters degree in marketing. You are now entitled to append the letters "THEY" to your name on official correspondence, business cards and the like to celebrate your new status and humble and intimidate all before you.
You are now officially "they" and your professional output is now known as "that's what they say".
The most important thing for you to take away from your studies is that there is no such thing as "society". The great unwashed and uneducated bandy about phrases like "society expects" and "society promotes" as if an abstract concept could have it's own opinions; rather like a standard deviation having a preference for blondes. Deep down, they know this and use the phrase "society is to blame" as a way of palming-off responsibility onto no one. This idea is synonymous with an enquiry into an Oscar-winning cock-up by a government official returning a finding of "systemic failure" - resonates as a sound conclusion built on thorough analysis but is really just a way of blaming it all on the dark side of the force and defining transparency to mean "you can see right through to the other side without allowing inconvenient culprits to get in your way."
Other than this special case, the public will use societal expectations to assuage their conscience when they do something terrible, or to support their frankly alarming decision to inflict that pair of pants on passers-by or to attempt to subsist on a diet of sea-water and recycled wheat germ.
But there is no "society", no carefully considered body of collective wisdom, no omniscient government agency that wouldn't let them publish it if it wasn't true.
There's just you.
While people are desperately casting around for an opinion, hoping with sphincter-clenching anxiety that you don't notice them doing it and fending off others with mocking laughter and sly sideways glances at their own particular choice of pants, you step in with the wholesome, pre-canned soup of social expectation, ready to eat right out of the microwave. They'll love you for it.
Tell them what their body shape should be, what car they should drive, what they should eat to prevent cancer and live forever. You can even give them fashionable ailments to suffer from; there's nothing as affirming as being able to blame your inadequacies on a new syndrome that all the best specialists in Hollywood are treating the stars for.
And have fun doing it. Have a few glasses of chardonnay and get into a bet with other THEYs about how stupid a thing you can get people to think is expected of them. Previous winners of this informal professional contest have included lycra, bubble skirts, mullets, anorexia, stilettos, plating up and the paleo diet.
You're the next generation of THEY; the future's in your hands now.
Good luck.
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