Miss Representation ala Brighid & Bess

I am but a young feminist. Like Thomas Jefferson’s declaration “I am but a young gardener” I feel there is so much I have yet to learn though I have been one since well…I’m pretty sure I was born a feminist.

The documentary Miss Representation talks about a ‘tipping point’ in 1980 when Reagan took office, which also happens to be the year I was born. And while the Republican machine was working during the 1980s, I was growing up in a loving lower-middle class home where my Dad worked 12-14 hour days and my mom ran everything else.

My mom is a feminist role model. Some would see staying at home to be anti-feminist (esp. back in the 1980s) but the dynamic in my home showed me how women can be viewed by the men in their lives: as smart, determined and strong. My family has always been matriarchal.

So, while Miss Representation names the 1980s and the ERA backlash as the tipping point, I myself see that tipping point as being Britney Spears.

See, as a teenage girl in the late 1990s I looked to 7 Year Bitch, L7, Team Dresch, Sleater-Kinney and Ani Difranco as role models. Perhaps, I was an exception but there were other girls like me in high school, some even more fierce with army jackets and severe, sharp haircuts. Think of Claire Danes and friends in My So Called Life. I ran around in men’s cargo pants, thrift store granny sweaters and the non-revealing t-shirt. I felt no need to be sexy. I wore what I wanted. I wore makeup for me or to cover a really bad zit. I told many a boy ‘no’ without any qualms about if he would still like me or not.

I wish the movie had pointed to the late 90s and early 2000s assault of pseudo girl-power in Ms. Spears, X-Tina, and the Spice Girls. At the time, the media even labeled these performers as “girl power.” The girl power I knew was spelled differently (its Riot Grrrl, sheesh) and DEFINITELY didn’t include push-up bras or being a ‘slave’ for anyone.

But what Miss Representation did do was call to light what is going on today, which is a long deep slide away from the power I felt as a teen. Women are to be sexy or not worth anything except the pleasure they can bring to men. Media in all forms: music, television, internet, movies and TV shows rarely depict a strong woman that is less than ‘sexy.’

I don’t want my son to grow up thinking women need to be a size 4, opinionless and great arm candy. I generally try to keep him away from what I can in this respect but, in the public schools, it’s going to trickle down. Hell, even in a private school it would.

The questions with the panel after the film tended to focus on What can we do NOW? And I think the answers are 1) to speak up when demeaning portrayals of women show up in media, not only shutting it off but also taking action with a letter, email or phone call; 2) supporting your fellow women. So many women today come down on their fellow female counterparts so they can feel better in a world where no woman can be ‘good enough.’ Extending kindness and acceptance to other women can have a huge impact on the social dynamics of womanhood and; 3) Show this film to the people, especially the men, in our lives. Men need to be informed of the degradation of women which infiltrates our lives. They may not even be aware.

Make them aware.

And a few words from Bess as well:


Sometimes, you watch a documentary to learn something, or see something interesting. And sometimes you watch a documentary because you want to be fired up. You want to curse at what you see in the film, and you want to feel inspired again. I think Miss Representation is a film like the latter. The statistics frightened and appalled me, and the deregulation of the communications industry, resulting in a very few groups controlling virtually everything we see, actually causing women in the media to backslide, really caught my attention.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, we had shows like Golden Girls. We had Grace Under Fire with Rhett Butler. We had Roseanne. And those women didn’t have it easy in TV land, by any means. Somehow, though, we had them. We had five older women living as roommates. We had a struggling single mother who had been abused by her ex-husband. We had a down-and-out couple with a strong female lead, a couple, I might add, who made it on TV despite the fat paranoia pervasive in all of American life today.

Can you imagine a show like Golden Girls on television right now? Because I can’t.
Instead we’re inundated with beautiful, thin women married to chubby men, even in animated shows. And listen, nothing wrong with a chubby guy. But do you ever see a chubby girl and a hot guy? I certainly can’t think of any examples. I like the show Raising Hope, but it’s portrayal of poverty is more polished and unreal than Roseanne. Dan and Roseanne Connor struggled with job loss, business failure, and keeping their home with that couch and afghan we came to know so well. In Raising Hope, the couple mentions that they’re broke all the time, but in a flippant way that’s not realistic, making it seem “folksy” to be poor, and like life as a maid and a pool cleaner is somehow delightful with no pesky aching legs or backs, no arguments about working late or how they’re going to buy their kid’s prom dress.

And when I think that today, the powers that be would never allow a show like Roseanne or Golden Girls on the air, I don’t feel that women have made progress in this area, and that’s what Miss Representation points out. As per Jane Fonda, “Media creates consciousness, and if what gets put out there that creates our consciousness is determined by men, we’re not going to make any progress.” Well, shit. Yep. Brighid’s right, we have to call that crap out whenever we see it. Just today I learned through a Facebook conversation that a cousin of mine had no idea that “cankles” is a derogatory term reserved pretty much exclusively for women. And I believe he had no idea about that, strange as it seems. I’m guessing my cousin learned something today, and I’m hoping that one cousin at a time we can change this landscape.


Watch a preview of the film here.