Representation Of Women

Improved Essays
Three confirmations that would support the claim of how the delayed progress of women holding office is due to the media’s representation of women is the gendered socialization created, the miniscule amount of female protagonists, and the idea of taking the boss down a peg.
Caroline Heldman states that “there is a gendered socialization where politics is for men, leadership is considered masculine, and women are discouraged from pursuing ambitious positions.” I think this is the biggest reason for the delayed progress of women being in office since it puts women off to the idea because it is not suitable for a woman. Women are perceived to follow in the footsteps of men, that men pave the way to a better future while that concept is false.
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It is a play on words since the overall theme of the documentary is about the misrepresentation of women in the media.
The first piece of evidence presented in the documentary are that the women who are misrepresented are the women of older generations. Miss Representation shows us how “women in their teens, 20’s, and 30’s are 39% of the population yet are 71% of the women on TV.” Martha Lauzen points out that this misrepresentation of women skews with our perception of reality. Women older than 40 are only 26% of women in TV but make up more than 47% of the country population.
A second piece of evidence that Miss Representation points out is that women in the media are being misrepresented and shown as less threatening and hypersexualized. This is a misrepresentation because in reality, women are challenging their male counterparts in every field – politics, business, etc.
– according to Jackson Katz. Because of this misrepresentation, this undermines women and all the work they have made to overcome the struggles of sexism. Because of this undermining, this sentiment of
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This is giving those who see these images, especially children, the idea of how to treat women. This misrepresentation is the most shocking because according to Jean
Kilbourne, turning a human being into a thing is the first step to justifying violence towards them. The spike of domestic violence can be traced back to the increase of sexualized and demeaning images splattered all over the media.

Lastly, another significant consequence due to the misrepresentation of women in the media is the affect it has on the younger female generations. Because the women shown in films and television are these women with “perfect” bodies and beautiful faces and reality is, beauty is diverse. Eating disorders are increasing with the younger female generations because there is this desire to look like the women on their screen. This is a very skew perception because the average size for women across the
U.S is a size 14. 78% of adolescent females are unhappy with their bodies and 17% of girls have engaged in self-harming activities. The misrepresentation of what women across the nation look like has created this idea of a “perfect” body and has led to the destruction of the self-esteem of thousands of

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