Miss Representation – Why Do We Sit By and Let This Happen to Us?, by Lorian Franklin Dunlop

When children are young, they believe they can do anything, be anything. Astronauts, doctors, President of the United States, even. But as we get older, society tells us what our real options are. Many of us give up on our hopes, our dreams, because they simply seem unattainable in the light of what society and the media tell us about “who we really are.”

This is especially true for young women. We are met, from early childhood, with a daily barrage of images which describe what our aspirations “ought” to look like, and they include twig-thin bodies, “perfect” faces, short skirts, high heels, plunging necklines, large breasts, tiny waists, and a variety of sexually-suggestive poses and facial expressions. From our first Barbie doll to our first copy of teenage magazines to our first issue of Cosmo, the media tells us who and what we can aspire to be.

Lest you think this film is just one more anti-Barbie campaign, well… perhaps it is, but it is far more than just that. We, as women, take our position in society so much for granted that we tend to buy in to the suggestion that the feminist movement of the 20th century accomplished all that needed to be accomplished, and is now a useless anachronism. We’re ready to rest on our laurels.

If that is the case, then why do women still only make up 17% of the US Congress, when we represent 51% of the population? Why are so few of us in the upper echelons of the power structure of this country? Why do we still make only $0.76 for every dollar earned by men? Because we choose to have it this way?

Well, yes, in a way. The question is, why? Why do we sit by and let this happen to us? The trailer for this film opens with a quote from Alice Walker: “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” We, as women, have so internalized the messages we consume in daily doses through the media which surrounds us, that we see ourselves as powerless to change the system which continues to oppress us.

So instead, we become what that system tells us we ought to aspire to be — objects of desire, tools for the success of the men in our lives, weaker beings to be dominated and used. Certainly not powerful, fully-realized human beings in our own right, with as much intelligence, strength and capability as anyone else to achieve the things we dreamed about when we were six years old.

This film seeks to inspire women to take back their power — to counteract the sexualized, minimizing, confining images and stereotypes fed into our brains by the media by boldly telling our own stories, speaking our own truth and becoming the selves we choose to be, not those we are told to be.

I’m inspired. I look forward to seeing the film.

– Lorian Franklin Dunlop

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