the messages of misrepresentation

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Recently I watched the documentary MissRepresentation and although I knew of how bad some situations were, I became more aware of the issue. We are constantly on media in our everyday lives and we become surrounded by an overwhelming amount of behavior which becomes engraved in our minds. The 10 hours and 45 minutes of media a day transmit to viewers and eventually make us believe this is the way life is. For example, the idea of women being beautiful only when they are young and look a certain way is a complete reflection of the types of programs we see every day. As stated in MissRepresentation, women in their teens, 20s and 30s are 39% of the population yet are 71% off women on TV. Women in their 40s and older, on the other hand, are 47% of the population yet are 26% of women on TV. So why as a society do we not feature a majority of our population in the media? Well, from early ages we are conditioned to think what we and others around us should look like. For example, as psychologist Susie Orbach says, “When 20-year-olds are used to advertise anti-ageing creams marketed at women in their 40s you get all these messages about how society thinks you are meant to look." We are now implicitly saying all throughout the media what women are supposed to look and act like. However, this seems to be a more underlying problem than imagined. Once women become older and can no longer produce children, they are considered to be less of value, for some people only view women for their childbearing abilities. It’s almost said in our society that menopause is the way of saying that women are no longer attractive. This can be an explanation for the lack of diversity among age groups in the media. Because it’s been advertised for so long now that the appearances of women determine their worth, we then continue falling into the cycle of seeing these patriarchal messages on the media. However, through our power as consumers, we can make changes in what we see by protesting to companies, not watching the programs and not buying from companies that produce misogynistic messages.

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