Blog Post #3 - Miss Representation Analysis

I have watched this film before in a previous class so the numbers and facts didn't really serve as a surprise so much as they did an ugly reminder of how far women have been shoved aside in terms of the public eye.
There were two things mentioned in the documentary that we watched that come to my mind. Those two are "Women are harder on women than men are" and "There aren't enough strong female protagonists in movies". Another concept that was addressed was women are nothing but sexual objects, which is not okay. When I think of these phrases the thing that instantly came to mind was The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. LBD is a video series on Youtube which is basically the novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen reimagined into a modern tale in the form of a webseries. The show in a way supports the ideas I've picked from the documentary as truths while at the same time disproving them. The first idea, which is the fact the women are more crucial judges of women than men and this much is true in the show. The main character, Lizzie, has a bad habit of coming to quick and not well thought out conclusions when it comes to other females. But of course the same could be said for when she encounters male characters as well. She bases her ideas of people she meets entirely on first impressions, these ideas are usually negative, and becomes surprised when they turn out to be completely different than what she expected. She is a harsh critic of not only females, but males as well, and the fact that I am a male and I can relate to this situation feels to me like it breaks this stereotype and shows how we can all be guilty of harshly judging someone at some point or another. Going from there the writers have done an amazing job of giving the character room to grow and learn from her mistakes and change and grow stronger. So yes I do feel that there may not be enough strong female characters in movies but movies shouldn't be the only place we look.The more I watch this show the more I am impressed with how well written the female characters are, especially when the family has to come together to support the little sister Lydia when her manipulative boyfriend threatens to release a sextape of them together in order to get back at Lizzie, here's where the sexual object idea comes in to play, and Lizzie takes this chance to step in and help her sister in whatever way she can showing that Lydia is not merely a sexual object but an integral part in an emotional support system. So in conclusion I feel that The Lizzie Bennet Diares does an excellent job of challenging stereotypes that modern day society has come to believe in.