Miss-Representation: Social Injustice in The Media

There was very little that shocked me in Miss-Representation because all  that was exposed is constantly present in my reality. Especially after I tried to be concious of social injustice  and became a feminist, I became well aware of these painful facts. As I watched the film I got another glimpse at the things I knew: women are objectified in the media, the media affects how women view themselves and can even drive them to serious illness, and women in leadership is very rare. These three  things are sadly something that one can't deny present-day.

When women happen to be represented in media there is almost always a degree of objectification  in their character. Even as women play superheroes part of their main image is their look or body. When it isn't Hollywood movies, the value of women is diminished to their look in advertisements. Meeting an impossible beauty standard has become the goal of many girls who consume these ads daily. The ads are digitally edited to make a skinny girl even skinnier and even change face shapes. Young girls flipping through magazines internalize these images and set out to prove their worth. The problem is their worth has become merely their look. There the problem expands and effects the girls on a mental level. The number of teenage girls that are unhappy with their body rises to 78% when they reach 17. Many of those teenage girls suffer from an eating disorder. For a woman to rise from these atrocities and present herself as a powerful women is becoming more difficult these days. Even women who reached the place of political influence like Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, and Sarah Palin are ridiculed. I feel that the backlash they receive is an example of men trying to maintain the oppressive the social order. The truth is women are misrepresented in the United States because the voices in the media is often the one of men. The major media corporations are lead mainly by men and after the media was deregulated in the1980's things only got worse.

I personally agreed with the solution presented in this documentary which is to regulate the media. The fact that things were more progressive in the past shows that the United States is now moving backwards. As a country that places pride in the values of the Constitution we should not be 90th in the world for having women in legislation. Also I liked how the documentary talked about how patriarchy harms men as well. Men are expected to be emotionally constipated and often that is unhealthy. I feel that the road to gender equality and end of patriarchy requires everyone's cooperation and including men.