“You can’t be what you can’t see”

In the first five minutes of viewing “Miss Representation” I was overwhelmed by the raw images that flooded my eyelids, and the Metric song that encapsulated the message that the deaf images couldn’t mirror. My attention had been bought and I was ready to walk away a changed woman. Enduring the hour and half documentary without getting off my feet and yelling in agreement with Miss Rachel Madow was a struggle in its self. This should be a clear indication of how close this film hit to home. I bet all of the women that walked out of the viewing space felt a lot more unionized and empowered, just as I did. Since the 18^th century and expansion of our country, women have taken a back seat to most anything and are assumed to fill their roles within a demanding patriarchal society. Although some fundamentally questionable ethics and morals of our society have finally started to withdraw, there is still so much in our magazines that targets the female youth that must be questioned and suppressed.

Miss Representation started with a voiceover of a woman by the name of Jennifer Newsom, the producer, whom suffered from depression, anorexia and low self esteem as a teenager. When she became pregnant with her daughter, she grew fearful of the unanswered questions that many mothers and daughters would undoubtedly have to face in their lifetime. She questioned why she had suffered such poor body image, and as a result, indulged in self destructive behavior as a child. As she began to look around her world, her new found lenses suggested that the media was to blame for this. In this context media should be confined to the terms of film, magazines, billboards and most importantly, our magazines.  Research has shown that continuous exposure to ideas and concepts can “shape and distort our perceptions of reality” (The Media Lies). With statistics like 78% of 17 year olds are unhappy with their body and 17% of them self injure; it seems reasonable to say that it’s expected for teenagers to battle with their body, and is a direct reflection of dissatisfaction due to an unattainable idealistic portrayal of beauty (Miss Representation). The concept of struggling with body image and having low self esteem has become a benchmark for teenagers to live by. Just as a girl is expected to hit puberty, it’s expected for them to struggle to love themselves and fight with the idea of what beauty truly is.

However, if we’re bound to fall prey to the media then we must understand why we’re so receptive, and why the audience is still buying. Sexualizing women at a young age is logistically, the smart thing to do for corporate businesses. These corporations are dedicated to cloning sheep and are there to hang portraits on the walls of prepubescent girls that depict a sexualized nation served with a side of butter. You get ‘em while they’re young, and the rest is sure to follow. Magazines like Cosmopolitan, which target the 12 to 26 year audience, are selling sex, paper bounded and glossy, with their favorite Disney star plastered on the front. When Cosmopolitan hits numbers like 3 million subscriptions, and an estimated 20 million subscribers, you’ve got to question why an overly sexualized magazine with every teenager’s idol on the front page, is the number one selling magazine in American college bookstores (Kite). But do we ask? Or do we just accept that now the social norm is to exploit our sexuality, one of the only things that belong to ourselves. At one point, the documentary shows a young girl asking when change will occur, and what will have to happen in order for people to finally pay attention. I wondered that, too.

If there wasn’t a demand then there wouldn’t be a product, and that’s most troubling. Until the arrival of photography in 1839, people were rarely exposed to “real life images of faces and bodies” and most people didn’t even own mirrors (Kite). Beauty was perceived by the eye of the beholder, and not the by the beholder of a periodical. However, some argue that because reading statistics have been going down for years, and that teenagers are the most likely to pick up a book, that it’s better to read something than nothing. However, I stand to blame magazines for the 55% literary reading decline (Moyer). If there wasn’t such a social stigma attached to beauty, then teenagers may be more prone picking up a piece of fiction than an article about belly fat.

Of course, magazines are not the only product at fault for what I’d call a body image epidemic. Television shows, billboards and celebrities are all a part of the circle that wants us to buy into the idea that we’re not as perfect as we could be. What I found to be the most implorable request of the documentary was when Ms. Newsom asked for women to be less judging of each other and more supportive. She raised the question of whether or not we as women truly felt like a lady could be president, and truthfully I hesitated for a few moments. This is when I realized that something does have to change, and that if our youth doubts even for a moment that we’re not just as human as man, then our gender is going to be silenced for years to come.

Works Cited

Boston’s Women’s Health Book Collective, excerpt from 2005 edition of “Our Bodies ourselves”. Retrieved from [http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org]

Kite, Lindsay. “Cosmo Magazine: The Best Seller that Sells Women Short”, Retrieved from http://www.beautyredefined.net/cosmo-magazine/, accessed 9 April, 2013.

Miss Representation. Dir. Jennifer Newsom. Girls Club Entertainment, 2011. Film.

Moyer, Jessica E. “Teens Today Don’t Read Books Anymore”, Retrieved from http://www.yalsa.ala.org/jrlya/2010/11/teens-today-dont-read-books-anymore-a-study-of-differences-in-interest-and-comprehension-based-on-reading-modalities-part-1-introduction-and-methodology/ Accessed 9 April, 2013.