Miss Representation Analysis

There is a powerful force in our everyday life, a force that shapes subconscious thought, which defines who and what each person is. This force is everywhere and people are exposed to it constantly. It fills our world so much that we have just accepted it and never considered the affect it is having on us. This massive force is the media. The full length documentary Miss Representation aims to demonstrate the severe effects of the media on girls and women first through its prevalence and second through its messages. “American teenagers spend: 31 hours a week watching T.V. 17 hours a week listening to music, 3 hours a week watching movies, 4 minutes a week reading magazines and 10 hours a week online” (Miss Rep). This is just a small idea

“Between 1937 and 2005 there were only 13 female protagonists in animated films. All of them except one had the aspiration of finding romance”( Miss Rep.).The women in media are depicted in a several ways that place them in a submissive, weak minded, catty, romance obsessed, and valued only for their image. This is done a few ways by placing women in positioning that are ‘broken’ or ‘unbalanced’ this give a weak and submissive message. Due the increased amount of reality television that only cast hyper-sexualized, drama-oriented, and romance focused women, this idea of the “hot mess” has skyrocketed. This diminishes women’s intelligence, ambitions, and credibility. The last message is to reach an unreachable standard of beauty, as the media only places value on the ‘perfect’ female body. This devaluation of body and mind leaves women feeling dehumanized, which then leads to score of emotional problems and

I am a big woman and have always been bigger, even when I was at a healthy weight. Being skinny just isn’t in the cards for me. This has posed a massive issue in seeing my body type represented in the media. Until very recently there was no representation of any women above a size 4. I am also quite short; 5’2 is not really represented in society, even though many actors and actresses are a little shorter camera tricks are used to make them appear taller. So where are the short round people, well there is Danny DeVito…. And that’s it. So not really the kind of role model I would look for. Nowadays, there are more depictions of plus size women, there is even a size 12 Calvin Kline model now, and that is great. However, they are all still 6 feet tall, so they don’t even look like I do. A size 16 on 6 feet looks different than a size 16 on just over 5 feet