Miss Representation Analysis

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Documentary Miss Representation, produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, explores the impact social media has on teenage girls and women of today. It reveals through advertisements, films, politics and music videos, the image of what a “woman” should look like in our society. The effects of social media have caused emotional as well as physical turmoil in the lives of women all ages. Through the use of successful women and women in power that can justify the wrongs that have been done to them throughout their careers, exposes the hardships they faced to prove that being a woman in power has its obstacles. A topic that was very well dissected in this documentary was women in the news and broadcast television. Barbara Walters spoke several times…show more content…
A point made was, although women make up 51 percent of the U.S population, only 17 percent are active in Congress. When men refers to women in politics they usually refer to their “mood swings” or “PMS” as a way of mocking their actions or decisions. Nancy Pelosi was speaker of the U.S House of Representatives for four years yet was never on the over of a weekly national magazine, yet John Boehner was on the cover of five magazines in his first four weeks. Examples like these support the documentaries point of mistreatment and unequal right of women that still occur today. Hilary Clinton was labeled as the “The Bitch” meanwhile Sarah Palin was “The Ditz”. Other men and the public criticized both of these women, Clinton for looking as if she was 92 years old, and Palin for her non-conventional way of dressing or she had breast implants done, in their 2008 presidential elections. Men would never be asked questions of this nature and Pelosi states when she began running the first thing they would ask is “how will you raise your children? ” and she is aware that men do not get asked these same questions. A solution to end this mindset is to have more women in politics so it will no longer be seen as an abnormality, and rather something common and…show more content…
Throughout elementary school and my pre-teens I was overweight and victim of bullying. At the time, bullying did not affect me as I was cradled and coddled by my Hispanic family that encouraged my overeating and saw it as cute (specially my grandmother). I was called by several names, yet my best friend, who was also overweight, and I did not care, we thought we were fine just the way we were. I believe another cause as to why my weight as a child did not bother me was because I never made a connection to the swimsuit models and myself. It was not impacting me, and I resumed my life as normal, playing with my friends, going outside, and rarely doing my homework. The effects of the media and body policing came during puberty and my early adolescent years. This is when I began to truly look at myself in the mirror and noticed my weight, and considered it an issue. In middle I began comparing my body to my slimmer friends, and knew I wanted to look like them because they would get the attention I never had. My mother also encouraged me to eat healthier after she divorced my father along with my Cuban family. I made a friend who was having the same weight issue as me and we both wanted to change. Shortly after we joined a local gym and began our work. Since those years I have maintained a healthy weight and good physical shape which has given
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