Chivalry is the combination of qualities expected of an ideal knight. The attributes that primarily make up this behavior are courage, honor, courtesy, justice, and a readiness to help the weak. However, in today’s world, chivalry is most often used to describe gentlemanly behavior guys show toward girls. As a young lady, I believe that young men are required to be chivalrous, but I wonder: are today’s young men truly chivalrous?

In this generation, chivalry is definitely dead. I don’t see boys opening doors for girls anymore; instead I see girls opening doors for themselves and boys walking through behind them. Sometimes I even see girls opening doors and the boy just walks in right in front of them. What this proves to me is that this generation’s girls are actually more chivalrous than guys. The reason for this is because the new “norm” is for guys to only do things that benefit themselves. Girls are used to this so, we don’t expect the gentlemanly behavior anymore.

If the example of opening doors for someone is not enough, here is another. At one time there was the kindly behavior of a young man giving his jacket to a girl – whether she was his girlfriend or not – when she was cold. Once again, in today’s “me first” world, boys don’t even acknowledge the fact that a girl is cold and that they might need a jacket to keep warm. In some cases, they don’t even notice because they are just too busy having other thoughts to even realize.

Of course, this is not the case with all guys. There are still a few boys you will find that still treat girls the same way they did back in the 70’s, opening doors, sharing umbrellas, and giving flowers. But trust me, this type of boy is very hard to find, so you’ll be lucky if you get one.

Many boys our age don’t even know what the term chivalry means. This is just a great example of how dead chivalry actually is. It would definitely be nice to find a guy in this generation that knows how to treat a girl- and believe me, I am not giving up on that! It’s time to bring chivalry back once and for all.