Miss Representation

Before we came to this presentation, I was already interested in Jennifer and her Miss Representation campaign so I was immediately drawn into her presentation. At first, she comes off heavily favorite towards females, but if you kept listening, she did say how the gender inequality is hurting males empathy and emotion. While females are expected to be beautiful, at a males side and a mother, males are hurting too because they are now expected to be and do so much. I think after making this point, if the males felt discriminated against or that Jennifer was here to put them down, they came back and understood that this gender equality issue is about them too.

The film definitely resonated with me because the video had examples of how females are downplayed and the examples of the male being interviewed said the comment about a female president PMSing and the headline reading Bitch and Slut. This made an impact on me because I was shocked how everyone seems that saying these comments or writing these headline is perfectly ok. I felt personally hurt by the PMS comment and I would have been irate if that was specifically about me. After seeing all the famous females speak about their opinions on the media hurting females, I was really intrigued and felt empowered as a female to break the stereotype. But after the film, I also felt against males. I have never been personally or directly discriminated against for being a female in the working world (yet) but seeing those women that were hurt also hurt me. The point that she makes about how the media is hurting males too also resonated with me because she brings her point full circle, the media hurts females AND males. When we first learned the definition of the feministic perspective in class, I thought, "Ha yea, right." I didn't think that there was a way that being a true feminist was to examine both sides, but after this, I definitely believe this definition and the feministic perspective.

I think her best idea was how the media affects both females and males negatively. Although she spends much more time on the effect of females, she does mention that is it important for males to understand as well. I really think to solve a problem, you can’t just look at, examine and analyze one side, there are always two sides and Jennifer is trying to bring both to light.