A lot of the points made in the documentary were fair and made me feel strongly about how women should behave differently in society and be considered differently by men. I also enjoyed how men were defending the points made by women concerning how women used to have more importance in society and even in a society that was highly patriarchal; however now women seem to be decreasing in importance even when we think society has 'changed' for the better. Women were seen as objects and 'props' for the male gaze to enjoy. They claimed how women were creating this image for themselves and it was the women who were setting their standards low due to the depression they faced over struggling to conform to societies demands.
This infuriated me! Although some points made did relate to some women or girls, most deemed 'all-women' to be vulnerable to society as the media was consuming all of the woman's confidence, self-respect and motivation to succeed to a profession that has been birthed through intelligence. It's a load of rubbish. Women, like all people in society are influenced by their surroundings and in today's society, the media plays a vital part in that. This doesn't mean that women, like all people, don't have a sense of free-will. People don't necessarily live in a confined box made up of the foundations of society. I agree- some may feel caged by certain conformities that society provokes. At times the restrictions that are set out for us can feel suffocating but all-in-all people aren't social robots and are able to have control over themselves and their lives.
Another thing that angered me was the set up of the documentary; a 'powerful' discussion of the misrepresentations of females, yet the whole thing was so carefully mediated and edited together, it in turn created a certain extent of misrepresentation of people and views. I acknowledge that this documentary was crafted to put forth specific views on the misrepresentation of women, but most of the 'shocking' statistics presented could also apply to boys and even men. Something like '78% of girls at the age of 17 are uncomfortable or unhappy with their bodies' yet aren't boys? If anything, the media encourages females to talk about their body issues, yet for boys it is deemed inappropriate and unusual to express a discomfort or feeling of body-consciousness. This documentary only enforces this ideology by allowing women to openly discuss and speculate over media representations of women and by not allowing men to evoke their feelings towards their representations in the media. A friend even said how he felt these representations are similar with boys and the statistics are presumably exactly the same for boys as they are girls- just because they are represented differently, they shouldn't be excluded from the fact that they are also misrepresented. By creating this divide between males and females this documentary is essentially promoting gender specific roles- doesn't this completely go against the concept of the documentary that tries to allow women to be equal to men and not feel dominated by men and male/female stereotypes?
Additionally the woman who is the voice of this documentary is stunning. A women claiming looks don't matter, yet she is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Also the women: supposedly professional business women who have 'made something of their lives' and have not had to care about looks; when looking carefully you can see that every single woman and girl shown in this documentary is wearing makeup-not always a lot but enough to look 'appealing' for the cameras, or more so to appeal to what society and the media demands.
And am I the only one who noticed that the title alone contradicts itself. 'Miss' implying a single woman. If a man is to be described using his given title, he is usually described as 'Mr', whether married or not. However a woman's title is mostly dependant on her marital status. By naming the documentary 'MissRepresentation', the producer(s) is immediately representing women as an object that changes when her ownership Is passed between different men. Is this done on purpose? Or is this just a stupid mistake? I hope for the purposes of the documentary that it is the latter. Rosie Bowen
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