Women and Power: Miss Representation

This past Thursday, Jennifer Seibel Newsom’s film Miss Representation made its television debut on Oprah’s OWN network. The documentary discusses the pervasive sexism in media, and was praised at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The objectified images we see of women in magazines and on television harmfully affect the ways women see themselves in real life, as women who possess youth, beauty and passivity dominate the media landscape. As girls learn to judge themselves and other women primarily by physical attractiveness instead of their intelligence, boys are also learning to judge women by the impossible standards of beauty set by the media. Even on the news, gender inequalities are reproduced, as the reporters often look like “someone’s grandfather and his much younger second wife.” The idea that media is made for men, who are a more desirable and evasive audience, is ‘justified’ by the myth that men won’t watch stories for and about women, Twilight be damned. And what’s worse is that we’re numb to it all.

The film also addresses the critical issue of the lack of women who produce media. The documentary provides dismal statistics, which show that merely 16% of film directors and 7% of scriptwriters are women. Only 3% of positions of clout in the media industry belong to women. The lack of diversity behind the scenes is one of the main reasons we still see such stereotyped images in media; the other reason discussed at length in the film is the emergence of female political figures. The most fascinating subject discussed in the film is the realization that as women are becoming more powerful in the real world, they’ve become more hypersexualized and objectified in the media, as if to take away that power. This phenomenon ripples over into the ways media judge female politicians primarily by their looks, from saying Nancy Pelosi needs a facelift to photographs of Sarah Palin at the podium angled between her legs. The film’s tagline, “We cannot be what we cannot see,” eloquently captures why as girls become older, they stop wishing to become future presidents. In order to take back that power, Miss Representation encourages women to show their discontent – with their pockets, as women make up 86% of the consumer power in our society. In this way, the media can be used to change the ways women are shown.

Of course, Miss Representation is not without its flaws. I found Jennifer Seibel Newsom’s personal story to be unnecessary, and her narration is extremely monotonous. Several critics mentioned that the film gives too much credit to the media as the cause of sexism in our society. But what really bothered me is that the film misses a great opportunity to discuss how women from ethnic minorities are depicted in the media. Even though Miss Representation includes commentary from Condoleezza Rice, Rosario Dawson and Margaret Cho, nearly all of the images dissected in the film are of white women, and the topic about the ‘angry black woman’ stereotype is only mentioned in passing. It’s a shame that the film meant to critique the media industry’s narrow depictions of women also leaves these marginalized groups invisible.

The All-American Girl

From a young age, I became interested in gender roles and how women are represented in media. When I was in the 8^th grade, I remember watching an episode of the MTV show Made. The premise of the episode was that a girly cheerleader, with blonde hair and blue eyes, wanted to be transformed into a skateboarder. When the show’s crew interviewed the girl’s mother, she said her daughter was ‘the all-American teenage girl.’ During this time, I had been learning about genetics in my science class. I had learned that having blonde hair and blue eyes were both recessive genes. As soon as I heard that comment, I thought ‘Then I guess there aren’t too many all-American girls.’ As someone who is both African-American and Hispanic, it was almost biologically impossible for me to be the ‘all-American’ girl. I thought about my female friends, who are all different ethnicities, and realized that though several had blonde hair and a few had blue eyes, none had both. I began to feel as though the girls on television and in magazines not only didn't represent me, they didn't represent anyone.

Celebrities Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon both appeal to the public as the 'girls next door.'

From that point onward I started to pay more attention to the casts of television shows, and I became increasingly disheartened to find that the majority of the leading female roles on television shows and in movies were blonde, even going all the way back to the 1960s (The Brady Bunch, anyone?). Of course, I've always known that blondes are considered a sex symbol in American culture, and seeing a blonde female, whether in real life or on-screen doesn't bother me at all. It's the disproportion of blondes in media in comparison to every other hair color that bothers me, since it's not reflective of real life.

It's funny that this is such a bothersome issue for me. There's obviously an underrepresentation of minorities in media; usually television shows and magazines will throw in a 'token black' to appeal to multicultural audiences (such as the inclusion of a black angel in the new Charlie's Angels). And I've never exactly been skinny, yet only seeing females who weigh far less than me on-screen doesn't bother me. But I think this issue of the 'all-American' female bothers me because it doesn't just offend me personally, it offends me as a female. It makes me think about all of the women out there who have come to believe they are not 'normal.' I think of all the young women who run out to buy the best hair dye and eye contacts they can afford, just so they can finally be 'regular.' I get angry at the media machine for creating an illusion that traps females. And I always hope that I'll never be one of those girls.