After watching the documentary Miss Representation in class, I feel really awful about the society we live in today. Before this documentary, I obviously knew about sexism and how harmful it COULD be, but I didn't realize how how harmful it IS. Probably even more frightening, a lot of times I couldn't identify what was sexism before this documentary because it just seemed so normal... like how reporters in an article would refer to a man as "senator" and to a woman (who is a senator) as "mrs." Doing this undermines the woman's power and authority. Before this documentary it never occurred to me that this would be sexism.
Miss Representation had some alarming facts in it to. 65% of girls/women will develop an eating disorder. This is horrible. We should be raised in a society that is all excepting and one where you don't feel bad about your body.
Also worrying is the fact that girls are beginning to see themselves as "objects" intended to please men. Women have to be strong and be their own person. When they become submissive to whatever men want, they are giving up their individualism and their own identity. How will these women act later? Will they know who they are as people and will they know how to act out on their own wants instead of someone else's wants for them?
Also, this documentary states that between 1937 and 2005, only 13 women were protagonists in animated movies. Also, only one of these protagonists were not focused on getting a guy by the end of the movie. This shows that we were brought up to think of women as lesser people. Women were rarely the stars, they were rarely the interesting characters, they rarely had enough courage to go through a movie and be a dynamic character, and on a whole they were more boring and worse than men. Animated movies are what children watch. If children are brought up to think this way, obviously when they become adults it will carry over.
It truly is scary how often and how normal it has become for the power of women to be undermined. It's terrible that this system of male superiority has even brainwashed certain women to think themselves that they must fulfill the requirements that are set for them. Small things such as having a little sister can really make males like myself realize that this is a big issue in America and that it must stop. I don't want my sister to live in a world in which she is a mere object for men to use and where her thoughts are worthless while it is her appearance that dictates her value.
ReplyDeleteI agree.It makes me really sad to think that women are starting to get disorders to fit in with society. They are not wort any less then any man. Just the idea of a women just being a object makes me really sad and uncomfortable. I think that a relationship should be a partnership. Not just some person owning another. I do not want our society to move in that direction.
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