A Missrepresented Point or Two: Blog #3 Charles Schlecht

That "MissRepresentation" movie was good. I enjoyed it. But the problem with movies like that is, while it may bring up a ton of good points and interesting statistics, it tends to show the covered issue in a one-sided way. I agree that there is sex/gender discrimination out there, and that sucks, but we have to remember to consider perspective: there are two sides to every story.

One of the statistics from the movie that stood out to me was that thirty-four women have been governor while 2,319 or so men served. Now, usually the first response to that is: "That's horrible! Sex discrimination in government! So-on! So-forth!" whatever. But my first response to that was: "Where did that statistic come from?" It came to us in movie-form, so it sounds viable. "Second, and more importantly, how many women applied to be governor?" The movie may have left that out to strengthen their point, but I don't know, I'm not a doctor.
If anyone has seen this year's most recent season of the USA Network's show "Suits," it was pretty heavy on gender discrimination. During the commercials, some of the show's actors would appear and urge us to "make a stand against discrimination." It is a serious subject, but we do not know the other half of the story. Maybe the male candidate was more qualified than the female counterpart, but the only way to know is to check their resumes and qualifications ourselves. And I don't know how to do that. I only just figured out how to post a blog.

Another thing in the movie that bothered me was Margaret Cho's case. When her show first aired on NBC or ABC or XYZ or whatever, the producers told her that she needed to lose weight. That wasn't cool. She even got a minor eating disorder from it. Then the show was cancelled. Then Cho said that the show that took her place was the Drew Carey Show, also saying something like: "and Drew Carey is the picture of men's perfect health." I didn't think that was fair for her to say because her show was cancelled. The really important thing to realize was that, at that time, it was pilot season. Shows get aired and subsequently taken off if they did not appeal to any audiences. Back then, her show didn't exactly appeal to me, while, one the other hand, I found the Drew Carey Show hilarious (I actually wish a channel would still air it). When dealing with discrimination, we need to consider perspective, context, and the other side's point of view. If not, it will result in uninformed ignorance, mismatched tires, premature pregnancy, and the like.