Miss Representation

Tonight a couple of us headed over to see a screening of Miss Representation, a documentary which "exposes how American youth are being sold the concept that women and girls’ value lies in their youth, beauty and sexuality. It’s time to break that cycle of mistruths."

Basically I was blown away by what was said.  Click here to check out the trailer for the documentary. 

There was so much good stuff coming out, it was hard to retain it all.  They also were able to bring together a great panel of members from the media, Hollywood and academia.  Some of the most profound thoughts, however, came from high school students.  Hopefully it will be out on DVD soon so I can watch it a second (maybe a third) time. 

A couple of things stood out, but the major one was on subjects and plot lines of television.  Apparently women are more likely to watch television than their male counterparts.  As a result network executives strive to create programs that are aimed towards males, ages 18-37 with the assumption that women will tune in too.  Many people talked about the fact that there have been no studies showing that men won't watch shows and movies with strong female leads (and not movies with protagonists who are scantily clothed).  It is just that this is how things have been for the past few decades and why rock the boat when things are working so well for investors and television/movie executives. 

This small portion of the documentary made me think back to fourth grade when my mother approached my teacher asking why we were only reading stories with male protagonists.  The teacher said the reason for this is that boys would not read books about girls - case closed.  I thought nothing of it at the time, except my mother was trying to rock the boat.  It turns out that she was quite the forward thinker and realized the importance of us reading about female leads.  Instead we would go to the library and pick out other books I could read on my own or instead of the ones the class was reading.  GO MOM!!  I did get some good parents who always encouraged us to think that we could do and/or be whatever we wanted.   

Other topics covered (to name a few) included how advertisements are photoshopped to create unobtainable physical beauty standards, the bias that news and television networks have because they are male dominated and have very limited/no female perspective, how no one has/wanted to change the way advertising works because sex sells and advertisers have to continually up the so they can be notice, how women in power are always put up against each other in a "catfight" situation and how women spend more time tearing each other down then supporting them. 

Another quote from Katie Couric which I found interesting was along the lines of, if women spent a tenth of the time worrying about problems other than their weight/physical appearance and focused it on some of the world's greatest issues, some great things could be accomplished. 

If you can PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE try to see if you can find a screening in your area.  At the very least, peruse their website and start spreading the word.

I would like to hear your comments, especially if any of you have seen the documentary.  Feel free to leave your thoughts down below and maybe we can get a conversation started!