Miss Representation Response - Brooke Dinsmore

Of all the documentaries about media I have watched, MissRepresentation is by far the most powerful. What the movie manages to do, and to do really well, is not just articulate the problem with representations of women in media but to also articulate the why and the why it matters. I thought one of the reasons the movie was so powerful movie was the juxtaposition of real, strong women with media images. This begins in the intro with beautiful black and white images of women like Barbra Steinem and Hillary Clinton with color images of horrible images from the media. Throughout the movie the story is narrated by women, real women of all ages and races, from all walks of life. And their realness, their strength, their flesh and bones and humanity is to me what made this movie so powerful. To switch from Rachel Maddow to images of Playboy models, from Nancy Pelosi to Desperate Housewives, is to understand the real tragedy of media images of women. As the movie shows these images are not real and they fall so horribly, tragically short of what real women are, of all their strength and beauty. These images are women minus their humanity and it is so much more apparent when you see so many representations of women who are fully human.

The consequences of these media images are made drastically clear. They are the internal, the pain and suffering women go through, the eating disorders, the self-harming, the feelings of inadequacy. And they are the external, the struggles faced by women politicians to be taken seriously. These things are made so beautifully clear, and so painfully meaningful. The movie makes you really feel the consequences of the toxic nature of media images. And it forces you to understand the complexity of the why. To face the systematic nature of the problem – the government’s role, the role of corporations and capitalism. The complexity is made clear. The movie also makes it clear there are no easy answers. But it does provide one answer, and that is empowerment and community among women. When at the end of the movie, a female politician told a group of aspiring young women that we must come together, say Hallelujah  sister, whatever gets you through, it resonated in a way that was almost painful. If we as women must recognize each other’s humanity and create a community, then I believe that we do have a chance at changing the culture.