Analysis Of The Documentary ' Miss Representation '

such as CEOs yet are still not represented in the media. Also, the way women are portrayed in

“Miss Representation” is a documentary film that is made by Jennifer Seibel Newsom. This film talks about many issues from the roles of females in politics, and the ways in which media negatively impacts women. The film examines how the media have contributed to the underrepresentation of women. Therefore, eventually, the film is persuading people to be open-minded, and study how media affects our perception, judgment, and behaviors. The targeted audience of this film is all people who live in America. People should be convinced to change their mind about stereotypes on women. Jennier effectively convinces the audience that the mainstream media has mainly contributed to the under-representation of women through the use of statements claimed

The Miss Representation documentary film by Jennifer Newsom explores how media contributes to the under-representation of women in influential positions. This message is portrayed by delivering content through media and technology as well as advertising partial and/or often degrading interpretations of women. The consequences are becoming more and more dreadful. In today’s world, composed of a million stations, people will tend to do more and more shocking things to break through the crowds. They resort to violent, sexually offensive, or demeaning images. Jean Kilbourne, EdD, filmmaker, Killing Us Softly Author and Senior Scholar Wellesley Center’s for Women states, that “it creates a climate in which

Can you imagine what females could accomplish if they spent as much time volunteering to local charities as they did worrying about their physical appearance? So many dreams, goals, and aspirations are thrown away because of something as simple as low self-esteem. The film Miss Representation focuses on that exact social issue. Various people come together in this documentary to tackle the matter of gender stereotyping through the media. We will cover gender stereotypes, the role media plays in shaping them, and what can be done.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s documentary, Miss Representation, shows that the media’s impact on the American discourse of women’s bodies, women in power, and the same standards of what women should be. Newsom effectively convinces the audience of Miss Representation that how mainstream media contributes to the misrepresentation of women in influential positions by having limited portrayals of women through the use of interviews from influential people, several statistics, and appealing to emotional sense.

The Netflix documentary Miss Representation by Jennifer Siebel Newsom explores how the media contributes to influence the young girls and boys in America. Every day in America we are showed this unrealistic look of what the so-called perfect image of women is supposed to be from the TV shows we watch, the movies we see, to the magazines we read, to the online social media outlets we visit. This documentary shows the negative effects it's having on teenage boys and girls in America, Miss Representation interweaves between the stories of teenage girls, telling their own experiences and how the media has portrayed the image of women to them. They share their stories from pressures they feel they have to live up too from how the media shows them

women that sends the wrong message to young girls and boys. After watching this documentary,

Jennifer Siebel Newsom produced a film called “Miss Representation”. This film focuses on the pervasiveness and the persuasiveness of media in reinforcing gender stereotypes regarding roles, physical traits such as beauty and sexuality, and intangibles such as power and strength. This documentary’s main point is how the media portrays woman in society. To back up this clause, the documentary actually demeans women since “Women hold only 3% of clout positions in telecommunications, (…) and advertising” and “comprise only 16% of all writers, directors”. It exposes that women don’t have any position in the world. According to Caroline Heldman, when little girls and boys are seven years old, they have the same chance to be a president. However,

I am currently enrolled in an Introduction to Women’s Studies course at Youngstown State University. Recently, we have been learning about gender and sexual scripts, and have watched your Miss Representation documentary, accordingly. I found the documentary provocative and, in some instances, shocking.

“People learn more from media than any other single source of information” (Missrepresentation). This quote exemplifies how society learns and creates their standards about people, places, and things. All sources and mediums of media impact billions of lives every day. The media holds this power over society and it’s time to change that; especially when it comes to the media’s view of women. Women are constantly being misrepresented. This misrepresentation of women in the media is negatively impacting America by corrupting both the youth and adults. This is occurring because of the hyper-sexualization of women, wrongly portraying women in leadership positions, and creating stereotypes of women in movies and television.

Miss Representation conveys that media is derogative to the most powerful women in the United States. People learn more from the media than any other source because it is the message and messenger. Americans devote about 10 hours and 39 minutes daily to consuming media (Howard). The media’s misrepresentation of women in movies, television shows, and advertisements negatively shapes politics, our national discourse, children’s inquisitive minds, and ultimately society. The danger behind these stereotyped images of women is that their effect is subconscious, meaning we slowly become accustomed to a sexist portrayal of women without even immediately realizing it. To cease our unrealistic, prejudiced expectations of women, a culture change is necessary.

(Heubeck 2006) For many young people, especially girls, the ideal continues to chase them as they grow into young women. Young girls begin to internalize the stereotypes and judge themselves by media’s impossible standards. The power that the media holds in impacting the lives of young girls is detrimental and eventually affects their body image, their satisfaction of their own body, and portrayal of their body as an object.

The female body image is highly influenced by the mass media and the media’s portrayal of women, ‘70% of college women say they feel worse about their own looks after reading women’s magazines’ (University of Massachusetts & Stanford University, 2006), the portrayal of women in the media has an unrealistic approach and brings out body dissatisfactions and this results in eating problems and disorders.

The message that was presented in the video “Miss Representation” was that the media is a powerful tool to shape the world. However, the media has been utilized not for the benefit of human being instead in the most negative way that anyone can possibly think of. It has indeed shape the representation of women globally in this generation. It degenerated the name of woman and what they are capable in this world whether they are use for political, and/or economical. The trailer for Miss Representation presented this powerful message through the usage of a video of selected people being interviewed about feminism and the cruelty that they endure during the twentieth century. This highly sensitive message in the video of Miss representation is

2. The study revealed comprehensively that in all forms of media girls and women are under represented. Research notes that although the role of women in society has changed dramatically over the years there is still a disproportion of male and female representation. The research indicates that the media climate is representative of the 1950’s versus 2010. The research leads to the question of how consumers are affected by media content. Will young females feel less important or have lower self esteem if they are not appropriately represented in the media? Another area of under representation is with respect to health related media content. This begs the question as to whether women’s risk factors relating to specific health concerns are overlooked. The study