The media mainly creates one image of a women, and that is tall, thin, "pretty", with barely any clothes on, displaying their body for men to pick and choose what they like best. The media created one image of beautiful, making all women who are not the ideal look, height, or weight, put all their effort into becoming this image by putting on makeup, wearing small clothes, straightening hair, trying to loose weight. And if they can't achieve these things they are stripped of confidence and self respect. This leaves women with no time to focus on the important things like school and personality. A statistic that was given that really scared me was that the GPA's of women have lowered considerably and that in this generation women are less inclined to go into politics. Women who do push pass the clutter and go forth into politics are then criticized and disrespected. Those who put women down for simply running for political positions just like many men do so commonly, are giving into the fallacy of Ad Hominen. They are attacking women for only being women to refute their argument. In the documentary clips of interviews and news shows of men discouraging women were shown. One man asked something like what is the downside to women in politics, and the other man responded with, "You mean besides the PMS and mood swings." Both men then laughed. This angered me so much I couldn't help but clench my fists and cringe my toes. This discouraging of women after all that they went through to get to the position that they are at, is unexceptional.
If enough people were to be educated about the secretive downgrading of women that has been happening for years and years, problems would be addressed. I truly believe, if everyone were to watch Miss Representation, the views of women would change.
I agree with you about the ad hominem being very present in modern day issues. You mentioned at the end that if everyone were to watch Miss Representation, the views of women would change. Maybe some people would see things differently, but for the most part feelings about women would only get stronger. Imagine how angry we got when we watched that. Those people that try to knock down women's empowerment would feel that same anger, in a different context, I presume. This isn't meant to be pessimistic, this is reality. However, I do believe, as you do for all, that some of the viewers would in fact start looking at things differently.
ReplyDeleteI so agree with everything you said. In the beginning, when you mentioned that you had never really noticed the way disrespectful, sexist way women are treated by the media, I thought that was really interesting. It shows just how conditioned we are to believe that what the media sells us is the truth. I agree that if we all watched this documentary, opinions would change vastly. I really wish this was required viewing in schools or something. It's especially frustrating to see women trivialized and not taken seriously!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you as well! I think that the way you tied in the ad hominem was really interesting. When you said that I also thought of another fallacy that might be applicable which was circular reasoning. I think it really relates to a lot of what you were saying because so many people make a statement on a women and follow up with "but then again she is a women." I think many people don't realize that their reasoning for degrading women is invalid and completely unrelated to the abilities of a women.
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