Molly Bienstock's post Miss Representation

Watching Miss Representation in the Women's Center in the comfort of my peers from this class was probably the best way for me to watch this documentary for the first time.  We all gasped and whispered at the same time, I heard "Oh my God"s scattered around the room, and comments like "Oh, she's beautiful".  Every woman or man in the Women's Center during the viewing had numerous insecurities of their own I'm sure, but we were all able to be impacted by the stories of other women who been made captives of their insecurities and forced to confront them every moment of every day.

This was the reality that this documentary was trying to illustrate.  It proved to audience members that a woman must defend what is inside her head at all time because her exterior will also be constantly judged.  The interesting point about physical judgment in the aesthetic world that is brought up in this film is the fact that women judge other women in a tremendously harsh manner.  Men, also judge women on their bodies.  When men are confronted with educated, empowered women, they don’t know how to react because they feel their personal sphere of hierarchy is being penetrated so they focus the conversation on the surface and only continue to question what is below.   

The most upsetting part about the way a girl views the world is the notion that she must live up to what she sees.  Magazines, billboards, movies, celebrities are all fake.  It is an impossible goal for a young teenage girl to want to achieve the body of a model she sees in a magazine because everything is photoshopped!  Miss Representation displayed this horrifying fact so well when it showed several ads, especially a Ralph Lauren ad, where there was a before and after picture for the magazine in terms of photoshop.  The beautiful model’s picture was cropped in the waist, her stomach was trimmed on all sides, her legs were touched up, and more.  The after photo of this poor model doesn’t even look like her.  What does it say if you can’t even recognize yourself in your own line of work? 

Another point that intrigued me was when Miss Representation talked about the American Psychological Association and how the DSM has printed articles on self-objectification and its rise in the past several years.  Self-objectification is when a person sees themselves through another’s eyes, always feeling the need to monitor one’s self.  In this thinking, the girl is an object and nothing more.  Self-objectification leads to lower GPA’s, less cognitive functioning, a feeling of no political efficacy.  This means that women don’t think they can run for office because they won’t get the vote.  Women are the minority in every possible sector of the government, and more importantly the media.  This is how our children are educated.  They see few role models for healthy, smart, and motivated women.  Instead, our youth receives messages about over sexualization, unwanted desires, and prototypes for what a man and woman should be.

I think the change happens in some serious education.  We need to teach girls and boys from a young age to love their bodies and express their feelings about the world because once they do enter this deranged and corrupt society, there’s no going back.