Miss Representation Essay

781 Words2 Pages

TThe documentary, Miss Representation, attempts to demonstrate how the media persists
in misrepresenting the female gender and in doing so directly (negatively) affects women and
young girls in America. The title of this documentary clearly expresses the film’s theme of
“misrepresentation”, and at the same time, using the word “Miss,” the title implies specifically
that the female gender is what the documentary is focusing on. This documentary argues that the
media tends to overly represent a very specific female identity-type and implies that this type is
what is valued and should, therefore, be strived for. This identity tends to be in her twenties and
thirties, unachievably thin, hyper-feminine, overly-sexualized, and not particularly intelligent …show more content…

Miss Representation exposes the detrimentally powerful influences these messages
have on women, men and society as a whole. The narrator expresses how these messages directly
affect women and their actions, such as explaining how 65% of females have eating disorders
and how rates of depression among females have doubled between 2000 and 2010; how these
messages affect men and how they view and treat women, such as how 1 in 4 women are abused
by a partner in their lifetime or how 1 in 6 women are survivors of rape or attempted rape; and
how these messages end up also affecting and shaping American society and politics, such as

women making up 17% of Congress and 34 women, compared to 2319 men, ever having served
as Governors.
Media’s failure to truly represent the women of America and, instead, valuing women for
their bodies, truly leads those viewing from home forced to succumb to these standards. Instead
of valuing and representing female CEOs, politically powerful women, and female
humanitarians and philanthropists, the media exposes the masses to women as sex-toys, …show more content…

The documentary even states that “the U.S. is 90th in the world in
terms of women in national legislation.”
The combination of the media’s message that females our valued for their bodies, makes
these women feel powerless and, in turn, distracted with achieving unattainable beauty standards,
at the same time discouraged from striving for leadership positions, since they do not see
“themselves” represented in those fields. Even in terms of Hollywood and movies, women being
able to see themselves represented in these fields, at the very least in these fictional situations
fails them as well. Hollywood continues to value actresses who measure up to these beauty
standards and stick them in standard roles and typical cookie-cutter films that end up revolving
around men. As a commentator points out in the documentary, there were many more interesting
roles and characters for females to play back in the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s. He explains that they
allowed women to be filled with the contradicting traits and factors that make up a complex

human being: a combination of the femme fatale, the mother, the seductress, the saint. This

Open Document