Students Talking About Relationships’ movie event on Nov. 28 in Ridgewood Commons was a great success and seemed to impact most of the viewers, including this author. The film was Missrepresentation, written and directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, which strives to expose how mainstream American media portrays women and the serious effects this image has on American females’ health, happiness, and academic and professional performance.
The documentary argues that U.S. media has created a culture that values the youth, beauty, and sexuality of females and that girls accordingly focus on these ideals rather than devote their time to developing themselves as people. This mindset has several regrettable outcomes, witnessed especially over the last few years. Females are no longer making great progress in leadership compared to their achievements over the past few decades, are still sparingly represented in the media, are nowhere near equally represented in politics, and still do not occupy many typically considered male occupations. Additionally, the number of American females displaying eating disorders has risen to 65 percent, mostly because women try to live up to the unrealistic and for most unhealthy ideals of beauty put forth by the media.
While Missrepresentation portrays a grim image of current American society, its main goal is not simply to enrage and horrify but rather to lead people into taking action. The movie lists ideas promoting change, which can also be found on the Missrepresentation website. Most of the suggestions revolve around the engenderment of conversations to raise awareness against this media phenomenon, to pinpoint instances in the media spurring on this trend, and finally to empower females. Females must be lead to see that it is who they are and not what they look like that counts and that in the place of doubting themselves, competing with fellow females, and spending excessive time on their looks, they should instead should focus on their passions, interpersonal relationships, and academic and career lives.