The Problem Of Female Portrayal In The Media In The Documentary Miss Representation
The role of women throughout history have always been portrayed by being seen as less superior to men, or as an object. Jennifer Siebel Newsom the producer of Miss Representation (2011) argues how since the start of sexism towards women, it has been amplified through social media, society, and celebrities. Newsom uses logos, pathos, and ethos to show how women are negatively characterized in the media or not even shown at all, leading to a huge impact on the way society views women and the way they view themselves. While some believe that women are defined in the same way as men and being treated equally, there is strong evidence in Miss Representation to suggest the complete opposite.
Newsom starts off the documentary with logos to help her support the argument of how social media negatively shapes women. One of the first examples shown in Miss Representation is “fifty-three percent of thirteen-year-old girls are unhappy with their bodies, which increases to seventy-eight percent by the age of seventeen.'' This demonstrates that from an early age women are put into a mindset where if they don't look like celebrities or the way society wants them to look they are unhappy and insecure with themselves. Added statistics to go along is “the number of cosmetic surgical procedures performed on youth under age the age of nineteen more than tripled from 1997 to 2007”. These statistics give further support to the idea that women from an early age are expected to look a certain way, and if they don’t they are degraded for it.
Another rhetorical strategy Newsom uses to help justify how women are seen as objects is through pathos. Newsom uses her personal experiences of her unborn daughter and how she feared her child growing up in a world that is so derogatory to women. She then goes into detail about when she found out she was having a daughter, and it sparked a great passion to start looking for a way to change the way society and media see women. This helps persuade anyone who has a daughter, or to anyone who in the future want a daughter, to help make a change for the future of young girls and women. Another way Newsom appealed to pathos was including high school students with emotional testimonies about how media makes them feel about their self-worth and appearances. These emotional testimonies gave every audience a better understanding and realization of what truly the average young girl goes through with media and society and how it deeply affects young women.
One of the last rhetorical strategies Newsom uses to help society gain an understanding of how serious the media affects women is through, ethics. During the documentary there was multiple interviews with famous people such as, Katie Couric, and Geena Davis. A statement Couric had said in the documentary was, “If women spent a tenth of the time thinking about how to solve the world’s problems as they think about their weight…we could solve them in a matter of months.” This example of ethos is used to help convince the audience and gain more trust by using Couric’s has a credible source. One Geena Davis’ statement that stood out was “All of Hollywood is run on one assumption: that women will watch stories about men but men won’t watch stories about women.” This is a horrible allegation of our society, if we assume that one half of our population is just not interested in the other half, we cause more problems with gender seperation.
The documentary Miss Representation was very effective in explaining the problems with today's media and the way women are treated compared to men. Newsom puts rhetorical strategies of logos, pathos, and ethics, to cause the audience to feel a certain way in to agree with the ideas presented. The facts presented help create emotion causing the audience to fully understand the point of women being seen less superior to men, while feeling emotionally attached to the documentary. The interviews from a variety of sources and celebrities contributed to a wide range of prospective messages during the documentary. Newsom does a good way of providing information to help her claim of how the media has negatively shaped society views on females leading to, the needed change in order to recreate a real society equally.
While some people believe that men and women are treated equally, and that the media doesn’t show the female population in a sexualized way by the way they look and act, Miss representation does an extraordinary way of how the media and society does affect women in a poorly manner. Newsom uses numerous facts and statistics, an example being, “thirty-five females have served as United States governors compared to two-thousand-three-hundred-nineteen men.” This statistic shows how that women aren’t nearly as in control as the men in the world. Another statistic Newsom uses to help demonstrate how women are inferior to men is, “seventy-one countries in the world had female presidents or prime ministers the United States is not one of them. By showing statistics about how far behind the United States is, as far as female influence in politics and gender equality helps show that women aren’t treated the same as men.
The documentary Miss Representation by Jennifer Siebel Newsom took time to fully and thoroughly explain the problem with today's media and society in negatively portraying women. Newsom used ethos, patho, and logos, to help show true emotion and help the audience engage and open their eyes to the huge problem right in front of them. With the way that women are portrayed in mass media, it will be years before females have equality with males in media, but with the convincing statistics and facts presented in the film help people take a stand to help end stereotyping of women.
