Follow Friday: MissRepresentation

Happy Friday, friends! It’s been a busy few weeks here with a huge nursing exam, fall break, some fun work with Team True Beauty, planning a trip, working with DoSomething.org, and the start of clinicals, so I apologize for being WAY behind on my Follow Fridays. But to make up for it, this weeks Follow Friday is going to MissRepresentation.

“The film Miss Representation exposes how American youth are being sold the concept that women and girls’ value lies in their youth, beauty and sexuality. It’s time to break that cycle of mistruths. In response we created MissRepresentation.org, a call-to-action campaign that seeks to empower women and girls to challenge limiting labels in order to realize their potential. We are uniting individuals around a common, meaningful goal to spark millions of small actions that ultimately lead to a cross-generational movement to eradicate gender stereotypes and create lasting cultural and sociological change.”

I’d seen previews for the MissRepresentation documentary and heard a lot of positive feedback online, so I decided to tune in and see what it was all about. This film started out with a startling fact that between magazines, television, radio, music, and internet, “teenagers are exposed to, on average, 10 hours and 45 minutes of media each day.” In case you were wondering, that’s almost 46% of a persons day, including sleep. Another eye opening fact stated that “American women spend more money on beauty products than on education.” I don’t know if it was these startling facts or the milkshake I had just inhaled (or even a combination of both), but my stomach began to churn when I heard these sad and incredibly shocking statistics. All in all, I can’t do the documentary justice, so I highly recommend you see it for yourself.

There are other ways you can support and get involved with MissRepresentation and here’s how:
1. Visit the official website.
2. Become a representative through the virtual volunteer program.
3. Download some sample talking points to discuss with family and friends.
4. Watch the film.
5. Pledge to use your voice to spread the message of Miss Representation and challenge the media’s limiting portrayal of women and girls.
6. You can also follow MissRep on Twitter and on Facebook!
So check it out! It really is eye opening and interesting!

See how easy it is for "reality" to become so skewed by the media? Because of this, women are measuring themselves against an impossible standard. It's time to stand up and take action. Do we want the next generation of girls to grow up comparing themselves to impossible media images?