Blog Post #6

After watching the documentary Miss Representation I was reminded of the many discussions I’ve had in the past about gender inequality in media. Mostly throughout high school I had countless people, both boys and girls, tell me that I was “overthinking” or “making a mountain out of a molehill” when it came to me wanting better representation for women. This documentary reminded me of why I never stopped arguing with those people; because women are still not represented well in media.

The documentary had many famous and educated women and men speakers from all sorts of media- television, movies, journalism and other writing concentrations. But they also interviewed children, from the high school level, on how they felt about women portrayal. These students said that they saw women liked only for their bodies, and some of the girls commented on self-esteem problems that they or people they knew had. These comments were backed up in the special with facts from studies that showed that self-esteem was low in girls in the recent years of increased media. The studies showed that girls are often discouraged from achieving their goals because the pressure society and media has on them are to be concerned only with their bodies and with popularity.

This was the argument I was making when I was the same age as those girls. I encouraged others to follow their dreams, even if there would be pressures for them not to. Often, as I mentioned above, I was told that I was just looking too much into this issue. But Miss Representation managed to present my argument and more about how gender inequality exacts and how it is crucial that society has to change for the sake of young people. For this reason I very much enjoyed watching this documentary.