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Gender representation in media
The media with gender roles
Gender representation in media
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Miss Representation proves the way that gendered socialization is heavily affected by the media in destructive ways especially for women. The title, itself, is a clever play on words and reflects the media’s portrayal of women. First, the “Miss” part of the title has significance.
“Miss” is not only a title that is used for females, but it is a title that when used alone to address women, especially younger women, is slightly condescending and patronizing. Therefore, by using “Miss Representation” instead of “Misrepresentation,” it hints that women are misrepresented in the media in a negatively disparaging and inaccurate manner. This unbecoming representation ultimately results in gendered socialization that is detrimental to everyone but especially women.
In addition, it could be said that the strong racist and sexist following of Donald Trump is the backlash to a substantial social movement in the past couple of years.
As the backlash from previous social movements has shown, the media can be pervasive, powerful, and pernicious. Americans, especially young Americans, are constantly surrounded by media. American teenagers spend 31 hours a week watching TV, 17 hours a week listening to music, 3 hours a week watching movies, 4 hours a week reading magazines, and 10 hours a week online and one billion people use the internet each day.
This much constant exposure to media gives media outlets extreme power over its audience. This power is even more potent in regards to teenagers whose brains are not yet fully developed. For instance, the narrator of Miss Representation felt that as a teenager she had to be more than “smart, strong, and accomplished” and that to be a real woman she
The documentary, “Miss Representation,” is a film about how women are perceived in the media. It is written, directed, and produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. She is an actress and a film maker who advocates for women. In the beginning of the documentary, Newsom discusses her struggles as a young woman surrounded by the pressures of looking a certain way. This film is targeting mainly women of all age that has experienced her struggles. Jennifer Siebel Newsom effectively convinces the audience of “Miss Representation” that the media has molded women in a negative way through statistics, celebrities’ and younger generation’s testimonies, and clips from the media.
Morgan was also a key organizer for the Miss America 1968 protest. The popular tradition of the Miss America pageants had long since been a particular target for feminists. Many feminists had very severe and critical opinions on the matter. They considered Miss America pageants to be associated with treacherous practices and customs. Essentially, they interpreted these pageants to be displays or impressions of women exhibiting submission and servility to men. With that picture in mind, many feminists thought very harshly of the concept of Miss America pageants. And ultimately to the feminists, these perspectives exhibited men as possessing more superiority over women, which in turn, caused Robin Morgan and other feminists to be very dismayed and unsettled. Another perspective the feminists found disturbing was that the pageants exhibited women as mere objects, instead of real people. ("Miss America Goes
The author- Siebel Newsom- effectively convinces the audience of Miss Representation that the media is so derogatory to women in power. By appealing the audience 's emotion, the audience 's idea, and the audience 's observation, the author persuade the audience to believe that this is an actual problem and take action to equalize the social gender stratification. Through many points made throughout the documentary movie, people realized that it is important to see two sides of the spectrum, and popular culture is no different. Prior to watching this film, people have never seen how women were portrayed to the public, mainly to the young females of America, and this really helped to open their views on this situation. All in all, the study of popular culture is important, especially in this social media era where information spreads out like wildfire. In this generation, this information is affecting people even youth, and popular culture depicting women the way it does can lead to future dilemmas. Miss Representation does a tremendous job of bringing forth these complications in a beneficial way for both genders
By exposing the flourishing mind of a teenager to unrealistic norms, television is molding the mind to develop impractical expectations. In the media teenagers are often times portrayed as party crazy, sex-addict, drop outs when realistically the number of students that live up to this image is quite low. When being exposed to a television culture of students that party non-stop, travel, and par-take in activities most don’t it gives the very hormonal mind of a teenager something known as “the fear of missing out”. When watching other teens on television focus on anything but school it gets teenagers wondering why they aren’t doing the same, giving them the feeling that they are missing out on things in life. As teenagers the job is to go to school to prepare for college and then the fun will come, but whilst being exposed to high school students that drink, smoke, skip school and still “get by” it gets teens thinking why they can’t do the same. This unrealistic ideology stems from the inaccurate portrayal of teens in the media. We are not exposed to the average teens yet the small fraction of teens with extremely financially inclined parents. This is not a realistic
Miss Representation, a documentary film produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom released in 2011, presents a contemporary issue which is the misrepresentation of women’s portrayal in mass media. The media is powerful in shaping audience’s belief in how to be feminine. Women are expected to be beautiful, attractive, and even sexual on the media to attract audience’s attention. Also, the film points out the existence of social system in which men are considered more powerful and dominant than women. Finally, the film tries to increase the awareness of female real value including capability, educational achievement, and leadership. Consuming the media wisely to eliminate gendered stereotypes can help young women build their confidence and be successful.
Stereotypically speaking, the image I carry of a Miss America is one who is amazingly beautiful and portrays themselves to be the closest thing to perfect. For crying out loud, you’re being crowned Miss America. Someone who represents this remarkable country we live in. That was an image I think she portrayed flawlessly. To the world she was beautiful, smart, intelligent, and a notorious motivational speaker who spoke in more than 225 cities. She was a picture-perfect successful woman. But what people didn’t realize or even see was the internal fight she had to conquer to even display the idea that she was only living a blessed life. Behind the mask of Miss America was a woman who felt guilt, shame, someone who wasn’t worthy of anything. In “Child, Family, School, and Community: Socialization and Support,” Roberta M. Berns explains how children who were sexually abused end up experiencing embarrassment and look at themselves as being filthy. More severely, children who are victims of incest find it very difficult to trust people, but at the same time are very vulnerable in trusting people easily (146). When the key concept Child Maltreatment of Abuse and Neglect came into context, it was very differing in the ways it impacted Marilyn. Being traumatized by the late nights her father came into her room and always having to feel a tense body, it made her
“American children between 2 and 18 years of age spend an average of 6 hours and 32 minutes each day using media (television, commercial or self-recorded video, movies, video games, print, radio, recorded music, computer, and the Internet),” claims the article citing the Kaiser Family Foundation Report in 1999. This helps to show that media is definitely a major part of a child’s life which would definitely help to make in an influence, but how does a child have time for all of this media usage between school and homework? Another statistic the author uses claims by the time a child is 18, he or she will witness over 200,000 acts of violence on television alone, stated by a Un...
Instead, women are being discriminated and treated as inferior due to the stereotypes that are portrayed in the media. The media creates and reproduces ways of seeing that at a minimum reflect and shape our culture. We can look at the media to understand more about a culture’s values and norms, if we realize the limitations of looking at the media. For example, one may ask, does the news based in the United Sates represent what the American culture is like, or only what stands out from everyday American culture? The answer to that is no. Instead, the media represents what it thinks it will be able to sell and is supported by advertisements. This includes violent acts, the sensationally and inappropriate. Jhally reminds us that “it is this male, heterosexual, pornographic imagination based on the degradation and control of women that has colonized commercial culture in general, although it is more clearly articulated in music videos” (Jhally 2007). Therefore, “media content is a symbolic rather than a literal representation of society and that to be represented in the media is in itself a form of power—social groups that are powerless can be relatively easily ignored, allowing the media to focus on the social groups that ‘really matter’” (Gerbner,
The title Miss Representation emphasizes that the way we portray women in the media is a
Led by Laura Mulvey, feminist film critics have discussed the difficulty presented to female spectators by the controlling male gaze and narrative generally found in mainstream film, creating for female spectators a position that forces them into limited choices: "bisexual" identification with active male characters; identification with the passive, often victimized, female characters; or on occasion, identification with a "masculinized" active female character, who is generally punished for her unhealthy behavior. Before discussing recent improvements, it is important to note that a group of Classic Hollywood films regularly offered female spectators positive, female characters who were active in controlling narrative, gazing and desiring: the screwball comedy.
In summary, the media is using its powers to make life a bit more complex for females. Therefore, people need to get their act together and put an end to this. Consequently if nothing is done to resolve this issue, we will be stepping back in time. The outcome of the media using its powers to shorten the chances of woman being successful is getting devastatingly frightening. As a result, our mothers, sisters and cousins will have no chance to make it in this difficult world. All in all, together we can stop the media before they take it too far.
The film Missrepresentation, by Jennifer Newsom, is about the underrepresentation of women by the media (2011). The film challenges the viewpoints of media that are constantly depicting females as to being dependent on males. Furthermore, even when females are displayed as lead characters, the plot will ensure that their life’s will surround the life of a male. Examples of these include, a lead female falling in love with her “prince charming” as he saved her from great dangers. We rarely see a female character saving a male in the media (2011). According to the film the media continues to encourage the ideology that a women’s power is associated with her youth, beauty and sexuality, instead of her knowledge and intelligence (2011). The film also provides starling statistics, for instance by the age to 18 78% of females are unhappy with how the look. Also of the 8 million people with eating disord...
Children become regular consumers of media around two and three giving them one and an half hours per day of television (Interactive Media and Its Contribution to the Construction and Destruction of Values and Character 7). This increases as time goes by. Now, on average, children use between 38 to 45 hours of media weekly because of family bonding, a leisure activity for the parents, or just because kids are bored (Daly, Perez 1). Because of the amount of technology used, kids continuously get new ideas.
I am hoping that my paper will produce a newfound opinion about the media. Not necessarily a negative outlook, but a clearer outlook. One that is not tainted by various reality shows and music pop icons. My focus will be on the media and its effects. Not necessarily that it is bad, but the truth behind it. This work is extremely important because to this day,
Children between two and eleven years of age watch an average of 25 hours of television a week.(Children's Television) Which means that children spend more time watching television than in school. With that statistic it is no wonder why this is such a huge problem that this nation has to deal with.