Sexism Exposed In The Film, Miss Representation

“Miss Representation” is a film released in January 2011, which shows the various ways the media represent women. In the short trailer it starts by showing quotes, various statistics, and input of various influential women, on how women are misrepresented in our society. Some statistics include on how women are vastly outnumbered by men in leading positions in the workplace and in government. It also claims that the media only uses women’s sexualized image for money, not because it is what consumers want to see in advertisements. For example, in a video explaining oversexualizing in young children Geena Davis comments, “…in G-rated animated films the female characters wear the same amount of sexually revealing

In Miss Representation, many female actresses, news anchors, politicians, directors and producers talk about how females suffer a lot of social, political and economic inequalities in today’s society. There are double standards against women in magazines, on TV, in movies, the news, politics, and the workplace. The media is an influential part of modern culture. When women are portrayed as objects for men to use -- never as the protagonist or president -- and when female news anchors are objectified, this will cause girls of all ages to begin viewing themselves as objects. Girls grow up in a world where their voice does not count; where our culture does not embrace them in all of their diversities, where

Women have always taken a back seat to men in American society. There has always seemed to be one set of standards that apply to men, and another set of standards that apply to women. This is evident in the home, workplace, and all throughout society.

Miss Representation: Essay A stereotypical representation of how women are over sexualised in the American media is presented in the documentary of Miss Representation. We see stereotypes of women being viewed as bitchy, catty and only useful in media texts as sexualised objects. The American mass media bombard the market with sexual imagery of women by cramming the media with unrealistic manipulated images of women whom sadly appeal to the youth of not only the American population, but also all other countries that consume that media. This affects most of the American population, especially girls, by subconsciously pressuring them into thinking that these manipulated images are ideal and if you don’t look like how society wants you to look,

The documentary “Miss Representation” deals with and discusses the sexualization of women within the media. It showcases everyone from movie stars to political leaders, and broadcasters to fifth graders. With such a wide range of women being showcased in the documentary, it goes on to prove that all women (and men), are affected in some way by this major problem within our media. The documentary showcases the sexualization of women in the media, the lack of powerful and independent women role models in the media, and the constant advertisements of sexual women throughout the world.

The Sundance film documentary “Miss Representation (2011)” was written, produced and directed by, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, an American woman whose goal is to empower women. Newsom is a “filmmaker, actress, speaker, and advocate for women, girls, and their families” (IMDb). The documentary explores how the mainstream media’s denigrator depiction of women contribute to the under-representation of women in positions of leadership, intellect, and power. To persuade the viewer the author uses First, Pathos to express the emotional battles young and old women, and even herself as a mother of a daughter endure in society due to the negative media portrayal of women. Furthermore, she uses Ethos Secondary which builds on her moral character as she first hand has lived and experienced being objectified, violated, and even battled with an eating disorder herself.

Finally, Newsom effectively convinces the audience of Miss Representation that the media causes the gender power imbalance in the society through the use of Toulmin System of Logic. All of the components are suitably organized into the Toulmin System of Logic. The filmmaker uses this system as the model to recognize, analyze, and construct her logical argument smoothly. Moreover, based on the guide of the system, the audience can easily break down the argument of the film into different aspects. There is a list of dissimilar aspects in the documentary, such as claim, reason, evidence, warrant, backing, and qualifier. The first facet is claim, which states that the media has impacts on the women’s values. The second part is reason, which means

Indeed, at the end of the film, there is a call to action to boycott media that seek to objectify women and instead support those that highlight women’s accomplishments. Here, these media are the makers of the claim that their subject, the accomplished woman or the objectified sex symbol, represents women, the “object”, to their audience, the consumers. Of course it is the audience that decides the whether to accept or reject the claim (Saward 2010). Thus, the film’s argument in its call to action is to reject the claim that the sex object represents women rather than the accomplished woman, using the strategy of boycotting the medium. At the same time, it is implied throughout the film that women are passively accepting the former claim through its existence alone. Instead of active acceptance or rejection of the claims made by media to represent women, the film argues that it is this hegemony, the sheer amount of media that make this claim to objectify women, that causes the claim to be accepted by the audience. Of course, it is not only women that are the audience to this claim, and not all women choose to passively accept this claim. Some women noted in the film, such as Sally Ride, the first female astronaut, chose to reject this claim rather than “waiting for a female astronaut role model”. On the other hand, many men, as consumers of media and thus also the audience of these claims to represent women, choose to accept the sex symbols as valid representatives for women. Thus, the film cites how women like Carol Jenkins receive hate mail that is against her gender and sexuality and how men believe that a woman cannot be a surgeon or a news anchor or President of the United

By American standards, women do not hold any real power. Women currently make less money than men for the same jobs, the United States has never seen a woman president and until the year 1920, American women had not even won the right to vote. Women are notoriously seen as less than: men are doctors, women are nurses, men are football players, women are cheerleaders or men are pilots and women are flight attendants. We live in a culture of gender inequality, always favoring males. However, all cultures are different and in innumerable societies all around the world, women are the ones who, so to speak, hold all the cards. They make the decisions for their families, they are entrusted with greater responsibilities and they wear the pants in their relationships. By enabling the women in these societies to have more responsibility, respect and equality, it strengthens the cultures and traditions expressed by these groups all while

American society is heavily influenced by the power of privilege; who has it and who doesn’t, and how those groups interact together. This influence isn’t only based on who holds most of the societal privilege in the present but it can even be viewed in terms of which groups historically had the power of privilege, and how they interacted with the groups who historically did not have it. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary privilege is defined as “.a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor especially such a right or immunity attached specifically to a position or an office” (Merriam-Webster). In America we see a clear definition between those who have it and those who do not. In our society it is safe to say men hold the most privilege while women are left to deal with what powers the men throw our way. By thrown our way I literally mean the powers men allow other social groups, not just women, to have through a variety of forces. Men use their privilege to dominate over women in almost any way they can, or at the very least they sit back and benefit from their privilege.

The message of this trailer is to display the inequality of the sexes in our country. The trailer reveals how media, Hollywood, and pop-culture, in all, limit and degrade women before our eyes and as viewers we don’t pay attention to these signs. I agree with what the high school student, Ariella, stated in the trailer, “There is no appreciation for women intellectuals, It’s all about the body not about the brain” (2:09); women in today’s world are praised for their beauty and bodies not for their brains. The semiotic tool being used in the trailer is speech and visuals in the form of assorted videos. The visuals are evidence to back up what the language is stating which is that The message is being transmitted by using influential people, commercials, news, websites and data to attest to the fact that women are underrepresented. Although, the trailer portrays how women are underrepresented it also shows how men are expected to be powerful and better than women. Women are seen as not worthy of holding powerful positions and not as powerful as men, as inferior to men. Living in a world highly influenced by the media women get the message that their bodies are the most important asset to their life. In essence, the film Miss Representation addresses the negative media images of

Miss Representative is a film that everyone should see, it shows how the media downgrades and under represents women in the media. It shows many examples like pictures, newscast, elections and much more. Tamrat talked about how we believe everything we see in the media, its visual manipulation. This media influence is shaping the dominant political views, cultural views of what women should look like and should be and affecting young women in increasingly negative ways. Media is more popular and people use it everyday. People viewing things like this are going to make them become followers and have passive brain dimensions like Tamrat talked about. We need to change this media so people have critical brain dimensions, so they challenge the statues quo and have innovative thinking. Becoming a teacher I think it is important view movies like this, before watching Miss Representative I never realized how bad gender differences really were. Miss Representation opened my eyes to the extremes the media has reached. Young girls need positive reinforcement to realize how beautiful they are inside and out, no matter what the media is telling them. We may not immediately be able to change what we see at the movies, on television, or in advertisements, but we can be positive influences in each other’s lives. Just like in the classroom we can’t change all teachers but by learning about transformative education you can

Throughout history man has always felt superior to women. Though most believe that America has moved past this discrimination, it is still very much so practiced. Of course in the news we hear about how women are treated in other countries. They either work all day for the family, have little to no rights, or in general are put down. In the U.S. the discrimination may not seem as bad, but with how advanced America is, any discrimination should not be practiced. Whether it be receiving lower wages or an easy target to abuse, women in America are still greatly chastised for being who they are. Other countries not as advances as the U.S. or who have different customs provide the women their with little respect as well. They have specific duties

In this film trailer "Miss Representation", it documents a series of admirable and influential female's views. It explores how the media’s misrepresentations of women have led to the underrepresentation of women in positions of power and influence. "Miss Representation" stands for the misrepresentation of women. In the beginning of the trailer, the film demonstrates some pictures and news to reveal the current social situation that the women are at a comparative disadvantage of the social. And 97% of the information that people expose is collected, edited and reported in a male perspective which means that the men dominate the mainstream acceptance of the social. However, the women comprise 51% of the population, but only a few of the women are in authority.

Ly Le The film “Miss Representation” has helped me open my eyes to how the media has influenced on both women and men’s ways of thinking about ideal images which are for both women and men, how gender decides your position in society, and who has the power to become a leader. There is a quote from Marie Wilson, the Founder and President of the White House project that still resonates with me after watching the film. It is “You can’t be what you can’t see”. It makes me think about the thing that most people see every day now is a sort of media such as television, magazine, advertisement, commercial, and social networks where they are all using abusively the images of women to try to sell or convince people to buy or do things.