The average person sees 5,000 advertisements per day; 5,000 images, sounds, and words telling us how life is or how it should be. Of course these ads don't reach us through a vacuum. They come at us in our cars while we're listening to the radio, as we surf the web on our laptops, at movie theaters before the previews, when we're reading the newspaper and most notably when we're watching our favorite television shows. We live a mediated life, and it doesn't matter if you get all of your media through one device--you're still a part of a world that is constructed by and consists of media. The truth is that outside of the classroom and life experience, the media is where we get our information about the world. Not to pull an Orwell or any other apocolyptic author, but 9/10 times if the media isn't telling us how to think it's facilitating our thought process.
What's wrong with that? The problem lies that even despite the democratizing digital revolution that makes information and the creation of information accessible to a very broad range of people, media doesn't exist; it's created. In fact it's created and controlled and not by very many people but generally by one of the 5-6 major media and entertainment conglomerates responsible for 90% of what the world sees on screens, reads on paper, or hears through speakers. There's been a lot of ruckus lately about corporate control of finances, but what about corporate control of information? Where are the voices against the small amount of individuals responsible for portraying total populations?
Here's one.
Miss Representation is a film that reveals the long-standing media bias against women and girls in the United States of America and the detrimental real-life effects it has. Written and directed by Stanford Business School alumnus Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the film challenges media's history of valuing women only for their sexuality and the under-representation of women in positions of power, both on-air and off. The truth is that despite women making up the larger percentage of the country and college campuses, they only make up 17% of congress. Countries in regions of the world we culturally deem "non-progressive" have beat us to the punch for centuries at having female national leaders, and so have other first world nations such as the UK and Germany. In case you were looking for higher figures, women do hold the majority in a few areas: 65% of women and girls suffer from eating disorders, 1 out of 3 will be sexually assaulted within their lifetime, and they are more likely than men to suffer violence.
The chain of command here is pretty simple: average people are influenced by culture and cultural norms---> cultural norms are perpetuated (and sometimes created) by mass media------>mass media is controlled by only a handful of people and those people are men (women hold 3% of high positions in mainstream media). This has been the situation since the foundation of the country. Isn't it time for a change?
In the 1940's my grandmother was a riveter. That means she went to a factory and built bomber airplanes for American troops during WWII. As men went off to war, women were called upon to fill their shoes in the workplace and they did so with honor and pride. They helped keep the economy running as well as assisted in the American victory in the war. More importantly, even women who did not work in the factories found ways to be deeply involved in and support their country during its time of need. The image of "Rosie the Riveter" is now an American icon and symbol of female power and economic and political influence. These influences have only increased in the time since as women continue to seek positions of power and make contributions to the political and economic spheres. Unfortunately, their voices aren't as loud as they could be. Today, most of the images we see of women emphasize their breasts or how well they dress. Today, women fight harder than ever to be heard instead of simply seen. This imbalance limits the voices and perspective represented within our country's leadership. It limits girls from growing into the world leaders they dream they can be. And further it leaves many suffering from the pains of adolescence as those girls attempt to grow into the women they've been told they're "suppose" to be. Men should be concerned about this too, for everything a woman is constructed to be is based off of what a man isn't. Boys struggle to fit definitions of masculinity created by this constructed difference.
Miss Representation is premiering on
OWN on October 20th at 9pm ET. You can find or schedule screenings near you via the film's website
missrep.org. The demand for change is in the air, but change in this instance doesn't require a systematic upheaval. It requires us as media consumers to question the images we are constantly fed and to fight them in our daily lives. Feminism today is a dirty word, but so is misogyny. You can participate in the empowerment or disempowerment of women in your daily life through your words, actions and
dreams you have. We know it's popular right now to Occupy Wall St., but it's been dire to Occupy Your Screens.
How can we question the power hierarchies that leave us in unequal economic conditions without challenging the hierarchies we actively participate in and that effect what we believe? - @sue_elise
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