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Miss Representation: Checkpoint 1 The documentary, Miss Representation, was directed and written by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. The film offers an uncompromising and powerful perspective at how women face sexism in the society. The significant truth revealed in the film is that the media contributes towards the misrepresentation of women making them seem weak, small and objectified in comparison to men. The media sexualizes and trivializes women in society, selling the idea that the value of women are primarily based on their looks and youth. In contrast, men are taught that their success is tied to power and dominance. Although women make up half of our population, their voices are often unheard. Girls are growing up with a biased perspective, in which undermines the intelligence and accomplishments of women, causing them to feel powerless. As a result, these girls miss out on the opportunities of leadership which make it difficult for them to go after higher positions in the future. Women who do try to go after these roles are judged by others due to their physical appearance. These judgements would have not occurred if they were men. Why? Because men have masculine privilege. …show more content…
The film features interviews of many intelligent, successful and powerful women and allies, from journalists to politicians to television personalities to mayors, academics and writers. For example, politics is an recurring theme throughout the play. During the interviews, Nancy Pelosi and Condoleezza Rice reflect on the common barriers they faced as a women in politics. In addition, the film provided an analysis of how media treated women politicians such as Sarah Palin and Hilary Rodham Clinton. This provides the audience with multiple perspectives on the sexism women face in society as well as learn about issue
In the film Miss Representation director Jennifer Newsom’s primary argument is if young women do not see any other women in roles of power, they start to think that they are not able to achieve that power. An example of this would be “You can’t be what you can’t see.”, said by Marie Wilson the founder of the White House Project.
“97% of everything you know about yourself and about your country comes from the male perspective” (“Miss Representation”).That is according to NBC news anchor Carol Jenkins. This is an indirect example of sexism in our society. Sexism has changed since the 20th century. We’ve gone from women strictly being classified as housewives to women being discriminated against in leadership positions. Much of the discrimination that women face is closely related to issues surrounding body image. What we cannot forget in the year 2014 is who control the ideas that we have about women and leadership: the media. The misrepresentation of women’s power and influence in the media cause many women to have low self-esteem about and can cause them to feel as though they do not deserve a spot at the decision-making tables. Sexism has been around since the beginning of America, in many different forms, but the impacts have increased with the power of the media. One of the ways the media has discriminated against women, is the way they portray women in the workplace.
With that out of the way, I’d like to examine the trope “the fighting fuck toy” or FFT, a term used to describe a female character that while appearing empowered, is so sexualized to the point she is nothing but an object for the male gaze. Miss Representation argues that this archetype confirms the idea that a girl’s intelligence is worth nothing compared to her body. The documentary states, “You don't get that message that you don't have to use your sexuality to attain empowerment in the world” which to me suggests their conservative views on feminism. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being conservative, after all, we experience enough sexual objectification in our media as it is, right? In reality, women can’t express their sexuality in the
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
Miss Representation is an American documentary that was released in 2011. The film discusses the media's immense influence on sexism in American society. Miss Representation implements gratuitous images of women, interviews from distinguished women in notable positions, and stories from high school girls in order to advocate its position that the media has a primarily negative impact on women and men in terms of gender standards.
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.
Miss Representation addresses the important issue of how women are presented in the media and how it can badly influence women. This film does a good job on delivering such a powerful message to women. I, myself, was in shock of how the media is portraying women to be represented as the “sexual” and “seductive” figure. The statistic that I found to be very eye opening was how American teenagers spend about 10 hours and 45 minutes a day looking at the media. I was just mind blown how this is in fact true of this day and age because I, myself, spend about close to that amount of time. While there were a lot of things to cover on, I will mainly focus on how women’s bodies are represented through the media.
Several years later, as I reflect on what Faludi wrote, I come to realization that our world still holds negative feelings towards women. Minorities have a bigger label casted upon themselves because of how often they are recognized in the media. Women are most commonly targeted as the minority in gender differentiation, which causes backlash. For example in the media, physical appearance holds more importance than achievements for females. Hearing about a celebrity wearing inappropriate clothing is just as likely to be expressed as to how well the football team did in their game. Girls are targets, always the main subject of matter. In Leora Tanenbaums book I Am Not a Slut, she describes the “sexual
It has never been easy growing up being a female in this world especially for young teenagers in the United States. “Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap” written by Peggy Orenstein reminded me of a film called “Miss Representation” that I watched in The Reflective Women during my first semester at St. Catherine University. In the film, the media sends messages that women’s and girl’s powers, values and worth’s lies in their youth, appearance and not how successful they are as leaders. The film was incredibly striking and powerful to me because it shows that the media can have a significant impact on our society and the kind of messages that being sent to young females can be very dangerous. As surprising, as it can be, the “Hidden Curriculum” that Schoolgirls exposed and the effect it has on young female as school help reinforce stereotypical roles struck me because I never know that the whole hidden curriculum was placed in the education system.
Since the founding of civilization itself, institutions were put in place to organize the social aspect of society. These institutions include government, religion, sports, etc., furthermore, these institutions largely required leadership to operate. Leadership of these institutions throughout history have been organized as patriarchies. Men (usually white), viewed by society as the strong and dominant gender, have had an overwhelming influence on these institutions. These patriarchies assign roles to genders and race. These assigned roles include misogynistic ideas that women are too feeble to lead; women are too emotional to make tough decisions; or even women are too weak to be physical, among others. All of these combine to make an intersectionality in itself. Since these institutions have largely been replicated throughout history by ones that supersede them they tend to keep the values that drive these ideals of inequality between genders and race. A prime example of this iteration is found in the American government. Since 1776 the United States has not had a single woman president; Hilary Clinton, now a serious candidate, is ridiculed for menial things that men in the race, such as Donald Trump, would never face. Criticisms such as dress and physical appearance are somehow justified just because of Clinton’s gender. These qualities of leadership in societies institutions stunt progression and if we are to advance any further, they must be
In most of the world, women seem to be the victims suffering from heavy inequality, from not permitted to drive in countries like Saudi Arabia, to occupational segregation in countries like the United States. So why is it even after the women’s movement in 1920s, and many equal rights laws in placed in the constitution of The United States, women are still facing such disputes across the nation? The answer is simple, from many years and still today the female gender is perceived to be less powerful than a male. For starters, the first video we watched in class about gender pay gap issue, brings up the number one issue in the United States women face. This is especially true in the business part of the world, most of the higher rank positions
By dissecting the film, the director, Jennie Livingston's methodology and the audience's perceived response I believe we can easily ignore a different and more positive way of understanding the film despite the many flaws easy for feminist minds to criticize. This is in no way saying that these critiques are not valid, or that it is not beneficial to look at works of any form through the many and various feminist lenses.
Throughout history, women have been portrayed for their looks rather than their intellect. Women have always been interrupted as the weak ones when compared to men. “Miss Representation” is a documentary that examines different issues that evolve around gender inequality. This documentary discusses how women are falsely misrepresented through politics and media. Jennifer Siebel Newsom directed and produced this film in 2011 to show how the media contributes towards the view of women in society today. Throughout the films concrete use of ethos, logos and pathos, the documentary accurately convinces to present an effective argument. The film shares many statistics, interviews, and experiences to help persuade the audience, whom are women
Women – beautiful, strong matriarchal forces that drive and define a portion of the society in which we live – are poised and confident individuals who embody the essence of determination, ambition, beauty, and character. Incomprehensible and extraordinary, women are persons who possess an immense amount of depth, culture, and sophistication. Society’s incapability of understanding the frame of mind and diversity that exists within the female population has created a need to condemn the method in which women think and feel, therefore causing the rise of “male-over-female” domination – sexism. Sexism is society’s most common form of discrimination; the need to have gender based separation reveals our culture’s reluctance to embrace new ideas, people, and concepts. This is common in various aspects of human life – jobs, households, sports, and the most widespread – the media. In the media, sexism is revealed through the various submissive, sometimes foolish, and powerless roles played by female models; because of these roles women have become overlooked, ignored, disregarded – easy to look at, but so hard to see.
While growing up, both men and women are learning through media that men are supposed to be smarter, stronger, and make more money than women. Now realistically, there are many times when a man notices a woman is better than him in some way, and that can cause some men to get upset. The reason being, that they are convinced they’re not pursuing masculine “qualities.” The outcome for their anger is taken out on women, because then they are perceived as more powerful. According to the film Miss Representation, 1 in 6 women are survivors of rape or attempted rape, 25% of women in the U.S are abused by a partner during their lifetime, and 15% of rape survivors are under the age of