In the beginning of the documentary, women's self-objectification was discussed. Because women and girls grow up with media that objectifies females, they objectify themselves as well. This self-objectification makes women less likely to run for political positions and vote. While I personally don't feel strongly affected by this, I have definitely observed the objectification of women in real life, and it doesn't surprise me that this has an affect on how women view themselves. Over the past couple months, a young man named Benjamin Cook has been uploading to YouTube his twelve-week long documentary, "Becoming YouTube." His most recent episode, "Girls on YouTube," discusses how few girls compared to boys make and upload videos to the site. The majority of "vloggers" and similar content-creators are male, even though the majority of the audience is female. The "YouTubers" interviewed (some being female) talk about how girls are often judged much more harshly for the way they look on YouTube, and many of the popular females making videos are "makeup gurus." I find it very interesting that even on the internet, there is a huge gap between males and females. Some of the females in the video remind me of Rachel Maddow, who, in Miss Representation, talked about the hate mail she gets that target only her looks and sexuality. These female YouTubers receive very similar hate mail, calling them fat or ugly. These remarks make other girls who might be interested in making videos hesitate because they do not want to be subject to the same comments. I have noticed this disparity, as I myself watch more males' videos than females', but the females I do watch have content just as good as the males'.
A high school student interviewed in Miss Representation observed that there are limited female protagonist roles in films and TV shows. Many of the films and shows that do have main characters that are female are "chick flicks" and are focused on romance. This isn't something I had thought of before, but after thinking about it, I realized this is very true. Just thinking about what I watched when I was younger, like the Disney Channel shows, there is a focus on romance for very young audiences. I recently watched an interview with Kristen Stewart (star of the Twilight franchise) on the Conan O'Brien YouTube channel. Stewart complained that people send her scripts with "faux girl power," in which the female character is essentially a typical male character but played by a female. I found this interesting because Twilight is certainly focused on romance, but Stewart feels that the roles she's being offered are not authentic. I think this is probably largely caused by the fact that most of the main people in Hollywood are men. Catherine Hardwicke, director of the first Twilight film, was replaced in the later films by male directors. These facts clearly support Miss Representation's claim that women are seen mainly from the male perspective. Going back to the YouTube discussion, I have been happy to see over the past year a series called The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, which is a modern retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice using video blogging as the medium. This series, while still including the romance of the original tale, focuses more on the women of the story and their relationships. Most of the actors and writers on the show are female (although the two creators are male), and this is the type of media that I hope continues to grow and improve the media's representation of women.
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