With the thudding, mind-numbing lyrics of “Fall in love again and again” senselessly repeated (again and again) along with erotic and bizarre images (what in the world is up with that fish?), the new Wuthering Heights trailer is the apotheosis of the intellectual depravity and moral baseness of media geared toward women.

A lot of women’s media is an insult to their intelligence and moral compass, but the new Wuthering Heights trailer takes the cake. One can’t help but watch it and wonder, “Is this what society thinks women want? Just a hodgepodge of senseless sensuality and intellectual debasement?”

But this really isn’t new. Much of the media marketed to women is morally and intellectually depraved. While the most popular podcasts for men, such as The Joe Rogan Experience and The Art of Manliness, delve into philosophical and cultural issues, the most popular podcasts for women, such as Call Her Daddy and My Favorite Murder, focus on debased gossip and gnarly true crime. Dating shows are incredibly vacuous, and rom-coms tend to be vapid and crass. Self-proclaimed smut is the reigning genre in women’s literature. Instagram and TikTok are often mediums for women to seek attention for their bodies rather than their hearts and minds. 

It brings to mind Mary Wollstonecraft’s lamentations that women in 18th-century Europe were raised to be brainless ornaments. Yes, women are more credentialed than they have ever been, but are they being truly educated? Oddly enough, women have more schooling opportunities than ever before, but many girls are still raised to be empty-headed and vain. 

While women are more secularly educated than they ever have been, sadly, the education of the heart and mind has widely been neglected. Women are trained for careers but not intellectually or morally nourished. We live in a day when “many are schooled but few are [truly] educated.” Women’s minds are not being cultivated for holier and higher things. 

But this hasn’t always been the case. This is not American women’s heritage. Women used to be the moral bedrock of America. Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America states, “No free societies ever existed without morals and … morals are made by women.” Tocqueville describes an America where girls and women are given freedom, think and speak for themselves, and are respected for being both moral and rational. “If I am asked how we should account for the unusual prosperity and growing strength of this nation,” he writes, “I would reply that they must be attributed to the superiority of their women.” 

So how do we return to this? How do we raise morally upright and intellectually cultivated women? 

The education of the heart starts with uplifting stories. Just as we need to fill boys’ hearts with stories that inspire courage, we need to fill girls’ minds with stories that inspire nobility and goodness. Instead of feeding them a diet of media trash, we need to introduce them to wholesome works such as Little House on the Prairie, The Secret Garden, and Anne of Green Gables. 

Both men and women have been deprived of a classical education that acquaints them with the wisdom of the past. Reading the classics can give women the intellectual depth Tocqueville described. I appreciate Faith Moore’s podcast, Storytime for Grownups, which provides readings of and interesting commentary on classics. While many podcasts geared toward women are fluffy and worldly, Moore’s is intellectually satisfying and morally uplifting while still being definitively feminine. Content like this affirms and cultivates higher thoughts and sentiments in women. 

Girls must be taught more than just conservative stances on economic policies and social issues; they must be taught to love the true, the good, the beautiful, and wholesomeness in general. This is often best achieved in the home. I’m grateful for my own mother, who filled our home with uplifting musicals and old movies instead of worldly influences. She also taught me to value learning and encouraged me to pursue it. I think my natural attraction to truth and goodness is because of this upbringing. 

Women are, as Tocqueville maintained, essential to maintaining a free nation. Russell Nelson said, “If the world should ever lose the moral rectitude of its women, the world would never recover.” It’s time to recover that moral rectitude.