In the documentary, "Miss Representation" there are several astonishing facts about how women are underrepresented and outlandishly unappreciated for the traits that make them common to men. The film discusses a lot of information about how media is shaping our society today, and also takes it back an age or two to see how women were portrayed not too long ago. "It is estimated that nearly 1 billion people use the internet daily," says experts, and this is all too scary, especially for our children. When I say children, I do not just mean our young girls, but our boys as well. The media is basically telling us and our children that it is alright to be a woman; we cook, clean, have babies, lead uneventful lives, and die uninteresting deaths, but if you are a man, you are the back bone to the world, you are strong and you will always remain in power as long as there is a world to rule. I do agree with all of this. I am a woman and I myself have a 3 year old daughter, and I am terrified to see the world that she has to go to elementary, junior-high, and even high-school in. The world is already a very dangerous place to live because of murderers, rapists, thieves; the media, the entertainment we are pouring down into our children's brains is probably the biggest danger of all because the media violence a child is subjected to will follow them into adulthood, and then you have a killer in the making. "American teenagers spend: 31 hours a week watching TV, 17 hours a week listening to music, 3 hours a week watching movies, 4 hours a week reading magazines, 10 hours a week online.
That’s 10 hours and 45 minutes of media consumption a day." When you look at these numbers, you think it is surprising that teens are spending all this time doing these things, and not out walking, reading, just enjoying life away from the computer or their precious cell phone. More children are obese today than they ever have been in America's history, because they are not encouraged, or perhaps they lack the incentive of getting off the couch or out of the gaming chair because of all the opportunities to be lazy that the media is giving to them. I know when I was in high-school, my little brother at age 10 was spending hours upon hours playing call of duty on the xbox 360. My parents had to ground him from playing in order for him to get any homework done at all, and he is a super smart kid. There are even studies that prove too much playing and too much eating and too much watching TV or surfing the net will will eventually lead one to being diagnosed with OCD (obsessive complusive disorder) amongst many other very serious health concerns. I loved watching this documentary, it was very intuitive and opened my eyes to concerns I have never really given much thought about, i.e., my own time surfing the net, how much time my daughter is watching TV and what she is watching. It is truly a shame that women are not viewed as people they are viewed as objects of sexuality and treated as property, and being a woman has its perks, but dealing with all of this inequality is a very serious problem. More women are reknowned for their looks ( breast implants, how they shake their butt) etc and not for their ability to think and live as men do. Lastly, "53% of 13 year old girls are unhappy with their bodies, that number increases to 78% by age 17, 65% of women and girls have an eating disorder, 17% of teens engage in cutting and self-injurous behavior; rates of depression among girls and women have doubled between 2000 and 2010." Where there is the problem with obesity in America, there are also those cases of depression that lead to self imposed injurious behavior, and even suicide. Suicide rates are higher amongst teens (girls and boys ages 11-16) and that is just scary. What would possibly lead a child if not teenager, not even graduated from high-school to killing themselves? The media and how others see the media and how they treat other people because of what they watched or read in the media. I do hope that one day, there will be enough people that acknowledge and want to change these numbers, and to help make the world a better place. After all, the media, with how bad it is today, cannot take away our ability to hope; that is something that everyone is born with.
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