The documentary “Miss Representation” played to a packed house at the Bertolini Student Center March 14.
The film was written, produced and directed by speaker, advocate and actress Jennifer Siebel Newsom.
Students from classes taught by SRJC instructors Anne Donegan, Narmeen Nasseem and Erlinda Peraza, who were part of the Q&A panel discussion after the film, were in attendance, as were a few non-students.
The main theme of “Miss Representation” was Siebel Newsom’s desire to raise her daughter (who hadn’t been born yet at the time of filming) to live in a culture that isn’t dominated by society’s standards for how women should look. Siebel Newsom felt compelled to tell this story because of her own personal experiences. When she was young, her older sister died in an accident that Siebel Newsom blamed herself for. Thereafter, she did everything she could to channel herself into becoming two daughters for her parents’ sake. To make up for the loss of her sister, she excelled in everything she did, such as academics and sports.
“Miss Representation” exposes how mainstream media depicts women in our society today. The film showed the misrepresentation of women throughout all facets of the media: magazines, television, film, music videos and politics. From an early age, young girls receive messages on the way they should look. They’re often made to believe that a woman’s value is based on her youth, beauty and sexuality, but not her intelligence or leadership capacity. In our culture, women are raised to be insecure, so when a woman is objectified, she tends to have lower ambition and self-confidence.
The film also revolved around the commentary of various female high school students who discussed the problems they personally face in society, like being scrutinized to look pretty or thin. Additional interviews were featured throughout the film, with several important figures including former U.S. Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice, CEO of the Paley Center for Media Pat Mitchell, journalist Katie Couric and celebrities like comedienne and actress Margaret Cho, and activist and actress Jane Fonda.
The film also portrayed the male perspective about the misrepresentation of women in media. Interviews with producer and director Paul Haggis, ‘Tough Guise’ producer and psychologist Jackson Katz, Ph.D and former San Francisco Mayor and current Lt. Governor of California Gavin Newsom, who’s married to Siebel Newsom, were also included in the film.
Several statistics were shown in the film informing the audience of some facts, including: 10 hours and 45 minutes a day of media is consumed by the average teenager, at least 53 percent of girls are unhappy with their bodies, between 1997 and 2007 plastic surgery tripled with the average age being 19, and 15 percent of rape survivors are under the age of 12.
“Miss Representation” also stressed that the media is sending out the wrong messages to young children about how a woman’s worth is based only on her looks and her body. Rachel Quintana, an SRJC Theatre Arts major said she thought the film was much needed. “It really articulated very well the concerns out there, but it really stressed the point that these things are still happening and aren’t getting better.”
Quintana admitted that when she was age seven, she would compare her stomach to her Barbie’s stomach and would cry because she couldn’t look like her doll. She said the fact that even one girl has to suffer like that is important. “The core of this movement is women realizing that they have more power than they believe they do, realizing the state of things and how our rights are essentially…we have rights, but they’re non-existent in a lot of ways when compared to men,” Quintana said.
Other media images shown in the film portray women as being second-class citizens. Because the media impacts our culture, women of empowerment are often seen in negative ways. It seems the more power women gain, the more backlash they receive from others, especially from conservative men. In one example, current U.S. Speaker of the House John Boehner was featured on the cover of five weekly magazines. However, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi was not featured on any magazine covers during the same time. This is what’s known as a double standard. In another example, a conservative disc jockey said that “when Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks, it’s like men are hearing her say, ‘Take out the garbage,’ whereas when Obama speaks, he’s taken seriously and people listen.”
Another statistic shared in the film was that advertising makes people feel insecure about their looks. In 2008, $235.6 billion was spent in advertising. A majority of images in magazines are often digitally altered or enhanced to make the perfect woman and to remove any real flaws she may have, which is unfortunate.
Anne Donegan, a SRJC History instructor said she believes the film made people question how they look at the media. She said that seeing images of women, starting at a really young age, being hyper-sexualized and only looking a certain way, like either being really tall, or really skinny, or really pretty, or dressed a certain way, you think this is normal. “Movies like this help us question that this isn’t normal. Most of the women I live with, work with, am friends with, we don’t look this way, so why don’t we see more people like us in media images?” Donegan said.
Christine Randolph, a SRJC Kinesiology major, thought the film was excellent. “I thought it touched upon some crucial issues that face everyone every day.” Randolph also said that a woman can empower herself by being a role model, being active and realizing how significant small actions, statements and behaviors can be for our kids. “Negative stereotypes have long-lasting effects because we see these archetypal images portrayed over and over again, and they’re very limited. It would be great if we could get through this type of film and see some things open up where women have more choices than the media,” Randolph said.
Narmeen Nasseem, a SRJC Psychology instructor, said that the reason “Miss Representation” was shown at SRJC was because she and her colleagues wanted to have a look at what is happening today with the representation of women. Nasseem said there have been many gains in women’s equality, but questioned if there was enough in other outlets of the media given that women make up a larger portion of the general U.S. population. Nasseem said that viewers of the film need to be vigilante and not just accept everything that they’re taking in, to question what they see and to be aware of what their response is to how women are portrayed in the media.
The best summarization of “Miss Representation” is that women should be praised for who they are as individuals, not for what the media wants to portray them as, which is size zero supermodels. Katie Couric’s quote in the film summed it up best. “The media can be an instrument of change: it can maintain the status quo and reflect the views of the society or it can, hopefully, awaken people and change minds. I think it depends on who’s piloting the plane.”
For more information on “Miss Representation,” go to: http://www.missrepresentation.org/
