Miss Representing

I want to speak to you about the theme of a little film I saw called ‘Miss Representation’ and it applies to our love and intimate lives today.

If you haven’t heard of ‘Miss Representation’ it was featured on the OWN network.  It was made by the Lieutenant Governor of California’s wife and it really looks at women in the media.  How they depict it?  What are the roles?  How women are viewed - women in politics, women in business as well as the women that you see in the story lines throughout television and film.  And it wasn’t new information but compacted into a 2-hour piece.  It was very impactful.

And, one of the things that came out of it was that over the last 10 years the way women have been perceived and talked about in the media has disintegrated.  And this showed many examples of how a woman in politics or business is fair game for talking about her looks in a derogatory way of basing her credibility in if she have PMS or not, how attractive she is.  And it was very interesting to watch this in light of the recent comments by Rush Limbaugh regarding Miss Fluke and his derogatory comments calling her a very degrading names and that’s not the end of it.

Women, you see more and more often in sexually demeaning roles, inquisitions and pitted against each other in relationships.  This was the theme of the film, is that we have to wake up as human beings to what we’re watching and what we’re allowing our children to watch.

Sexty-seven percent of women have an eating disorder and that’s freezing because we are fed this constant menu of very one dimensional types of women and what does that do to our dynamics in relationships?

Subconsciously, it really undervalues who you are as a woman.  It also subconsciously communicates how you expect to be treated and how men can treat you.  It’s very important to realize what we’re feeding ourselves for what we watch, what we listen to, what we read every day.  And we have the power to change that and the way we do that is by choosing what we watch, choosing what we buy to read, choosing what we look at on the internet and choosing how we conduct ourselves as a woman and what we expect.  What are the values and the treatment that we are willing to engage in in our personal relationship?

There are so many amazing men that watched these videos every week and I just want to say this is our issue.  It’s time for us to really acknowledge each other as whole people not just little aspect of the self, which is physical attraction.  We are spiritual.  We are emotional.  We are physical.  We are mental.  And all of that has to be acknowledged within us and expressed and received in a relationship. 

If you’re not doing that today, you’re playing into the degradation of relationships as we are experiencing them today.