MissRepresentation

The moments that stood out most to me during this documentary were the comments made by male newscasters. I was absolutely appalled by their fundamental perception of women. They truly believe women are nothing more than their faces, their bodies, their boobs. They take any little thing a woman does and completely belittles them, despite the fact that not even themselves are perfect. Women in media have to be literally perfect to escape the undeserved and unreasonable criticism from men in the news. There can't be too much leg, but she can't be wearing pants. There can't be too much cleavage, but if there isn't enough she is a prude. She can't be too dumb, but if she is too smart she will be seen as a threat. If she shows passion and emotion for an issue, she is delusional and unfit for a leadership role. But, if a man shows passion and emotion, he is driven and truly cares about his work. The amount of hypocrisy and sexism in this is infuriating. I cannot express my distaste for this in words. 

Some men have been raised by society and media to honestly believe that all a woman has to offer is her amount of beauty. This phenomena is reinforced through the news and media, because the stories about women tend to be about appearances, what they wore, who they are dating; never about their ideas or actual work. When being interviewed, actors are usually asked about their character's development and more in depth things, while actresses are asked about their costumes, how it was to work with other actors, and other surface level things. 

The saddest part is, this is so engrained in society that women start to believe it too. In the past I believed my appearance was the thing I needed to care about most in order to gain approval. For most of my life I was severely insecure, which I believe can be credited greatly to the media. I believed I was worthless because I viewed my appearance as below par. Another big reason insecurity can impact girls is the interaction between girls themselves. There can be serious hostility between girls and women in our lives. We are always pitted against each other in the media, so it seems that almost everything must be a competition. 

I do think there have been major advances in the media concerning our view of women, and I believe it will increasingly become better. Because this is a fundamental ideology, there needs to be a fundamental change in this society's perception of women. 

The first thing that comes up when you search "women" is an article titled "Sexy Women: Photos of Celebrities, Models, and Actresses." I think this shows we do have some more progress to make. 

Sexy Women Article