As a girl who just turned 19 years old and the older sister of a 14-year-old girl, I wish someone would have shown me "Miss Representation" by Jennifer Newson when I was a preteen. We are living in a digital world today where what we look like, what designer brands we wear, and how thin we are takes precedent over everything.
I too, have succumb to this. I too have taken too much time to make sure I fit in with the status quo of looking thin and looking my best all the time, not even for myself, but so I am just like everyone else. I learned from magazines, television, movies, and the internet that this was okay, that this is normal. Something has to change. As women, we can not define ourselves based on how we look. Our looks do not define us. Our kindness, compassion, intelligence, and love towards others, that is what defines us. We can't learn to love or be kind from a movie or the internet.
I watched "Miss Representation" a year and a half ago and it truly has shaped my life for the better. I am more aware of how the media effects me and I use this to try to not let it effect me. If you a girl and believe this is not effecting you, trust me, it is. Something has to change. I truly believe every girl around the world should see this movie to understand the detrimental effects the media has on us. Here are some of the disturbing facts I learned from the movie.
American teenagers spend 31 hours a week watching television, 17 hours a week listening to music, 3 hours a week watching movies, 4 hours reading magazines, 10 hours a week online. That equates to 10 hours and 45 minutes of media consumption a day.
The media is the message and the messenger. People learn more from media than any source of information.
Girls get the message from very early on that what is most important is how they look, that their value, their worth, depends on that. And boys get the message that this is what is important about girls. We get this from advertisements, movies, television shows, and video games.
Fifty-three percent of 13-year-old girls are unhappy with their bodies. That number increases to 78 percent by age 17. Sixty-five percent of women and girls have an eating disorder. Seventeen percent of teens engaging in cutting and self-injurious behavior. Rates of depression among girls and women have doubled from 2000 and 2010.
U.S. advertisers spent 235.6 billion dollars in 2009. Eighty percent of the countries in the world have GDP's less than that.
Women are spending more money to make themselves look beautiful than on their education. U.S. women spend 12,000 to 15,000 a year on beauty products and salon services. The number of cosmetic surgical procedures performed on your under the age 19 more than tripled from 1997 to 2007.
Not only are girls seen as objects, by other people, they learn to see themselves as objects. Turning human beings into objects is always the first step towards justifying violence against that person.
The American Psychological Association has found in recent years that self-objectification has become a national epidemic. Negative consequences including shame, anxiety, and self-disgust. This causes girls to have lower ambition, lower cognitive function, depression, eating disorders, and lower GPAs.
Women who are high self-objectifiers have lower political efficacy. Political efficacy is the idea that your voice matters in politics and that you can bring about change in politics.
Women make up 51 percent of the U.S. population. Yet comprise 17 percent of congress. The 2010 mid-term election is the first time women have not made gains in Congress since 1979. At this rate, women may not achieve parity for 500 years.
Only 34 women have ever served as governors. Compared to 2319 men.
Sixty-seven countries in the world have had female presidents or prime ministers. The U.S. is not one of them. The U.S. is 90th in the world in terms of women in national legislatures.
Women make 77 cents to every dollars a man earns. I repeat, women make 77 cents to every dollar a man earns.
Only 16 percent of protagonists in films are female. Women in their teens, 20s, and 30s, are 39 percent of the population, yet are 71 percent of women on television. Women 40 and older are 47 percent of the population, yet are 26 percent of women on television.
Reality television has taught women to become natural enemies, vying for the prize of trying to be more beautiful than the rest or trying to get the love of someone is so counter to women in real life.
There is an equal power relationship going on. Girl's bodies are on display and the boys get the power to judge their bodies if they are acceptable or not.
On O'Riley Factor, O'Riley: "You get a woman in the oval office, the most power woman in the world, whats the downside? Unnamed person being interviewed: "You mean besides the PMS and the mood swings?"
When press representation of women running for political positions are only focusing on how women look instead of the issues and positions on policies. It trivializes women. It makes women seem less powerful.
In John Boehner's first four weeks as Speaker of the House, he was on the cover of five national weekly magazines. In Nancy Pelosi's four years as Speak of the House, she has been on the cover of zero national weekly magazines.
Women own only 5.8 percent of all television stations and 6 percent of radio stations.
Women hold only 3 percent of clout positions in telecommunications, entertainment, publishing and advertising.
The "glass ceiling" preventing women from attaining top jobs has all but vanished -- especially in the media and entertainment business.
Women comprise only 16 percent of all writers, directors, producers, cinematographers and editors.
During WW2, 6,000,000 women were pulled into factories because of the absence of men. By the time the war was over, 80 percent of the women wanted to stay at their jobs. When the men returned home, within two days of victory, 800,000 women were fired from the aircraft industry. The other companies began to follow suit.
Basic History on Women:
1960: Oral contraceptive birth control approved.
1963: Betty Friedan publishes, The Feminine Mystique.
1963: Equal Pay Act passes.
1964: Sex discrimination in the workplace is banned.
1966: National Organization for Women.
1968: Shirley Chrisholm, first African-American woman elected into Congress.
1972: Title IX passes, prohibiting sex discrimination in school.
1973: Roe Vs. Wade, Pro-Choice
1973: Billie Jean King, defeats Bobby Riggs "Battle of the Sexes."
1974: Little League baseball is opened to girls.
1974: Women admitted into U.S. Military Academy.
1976: Barbara Walters, first female evening news anchor.
1976: The Supreme Court grants advertising First Amendment protection.
1978: 100,000 people march for the Equal Rights Amendment.
1980: Congress weakens the Federal Trade Commission's stop "unfair" advertising.
1982: The Equal Rights Amendment fails to gain ratification.
1990: Studies find a steady increase in explicit sexual images in advertising.
1996: Telecommunication Act Passed.
Pat Robinson (executive chairman and former Souther Baptist minister) says, "The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians."
One in four girls experience teen dating violence. One in four women are abused by a partner in their lifetime. One in six women are survivors of rape or attempted rape. Fifteen percent of rape survivors are under the age of 12. Rape survivors are most likely to suffer from: depression, abuse of alcohol and drugs and contemplate suicide.
Seventy percent of women in the workforce are mothers and yet, we have no national paid family leave, childcare of flex time policy.
This is a lot to process. Trust me, I understand. I have watched this movie countless times and I still get angry, the chills and heartbroken by these facts. It has become so normal for everyone to let media control our lives and control how we view women. However, this is reality. This is the world we live in.
I had the opportunity to listen to Jennifer Newsom speak in person and if there is one thing I learned from her, it's that we need to be the start of change. Women need to come together, not work against each other, to start the movement of change for a better life for us, the next generation, our children, and our children's children. Coming from an all girls catholic school, it is engrained in my brain that we need to create change, however, not many girls had the same opportunity I had to be educated on this topic.
This topic is heavy and that is why it is not exactly "table talk". But it needs to become table talk and it needs to be advocated for. As women, we deserve a voice. We need to challenge the media and show them we are worth more than the way we look. We need to encourage women next to us, in different states, and different backgrounds that we are all important and we are not defined by our bodies.
Our gender should not inhibit that. Our gender should make us powerful and positive change makers to make a better world for everyone. The first step is yes, to watch this movie and understand what the media has done to women. The next step is to advocate it, make change in our own community and around the world, and not conform to it.
This is a social responsibility we have to have for ourselves and all women. Together, we can make a change to change our own lives and women in the United States and around the world. I am just one girl, yet, I believe I can make a little change in my lifetime, and I believe every woman and man can make a change, too.
