Name a film that passes these three tests: (1) there are at least two named female characters (2) who talk to each other and (3) who talk about something other than their love interests. Struggling? The dearth of such films is indicative of a media industry that perpetuates latent prejudice in society. Or so the argument presented by Miss Representation goes. On Saturday I joined a febrile audience at the South Exam Schools to watch the a feature-length documentary, launched to critical acclaim in the States and now garnering attention on university campuses in the UK.
I liked it. It conveyed a social mission similar to the Michael Moore movies, but with less theatrics and more focus. The thesis is that Western youth are being sold the concept of female value lying in youth, beauty and sexuality. The media – increasingly conglomerated and dominated by private, masculine interests – is doing the selling and we, as consumers, are conditioned from youth to lap it up. The result is that we have an intensely patriarchal society in which new gender stereotypes encourage men and women to participate in an inequitable system which rewards and values female endeavour less. The arguments are multifaceted, and my interpretation is just one. I had only two criticisms, one incidental, the other fundamental. First, there is a somewhat lazy use of statistics. The film states that 65% of women suffer from eating disorders – this seems spurious or based on an overly expansive understanding of what eating disorders are. Second, whilst the diagnosis was clear and powerful, the prescription proved elusive.
Hollywood has undoubtedly done women a disservice by consistently awarding women mundane, one-dimensional roles. For every Thelma and Louise or Million Dollar Baby which feature strong female leads, a hundred others portray women as the helpless sexual playthings of powerful male protagonists. Indeed, the 23rd film of one long-running series of patriarchal propaganda, otherwise known as the Bond films, will be released this October. Even the Sex and the City series rarely deviates from the ladies’ desire to be whisked off their feet by handsome, rich Prince Charmings. Most ‘chick flicks’, which are supposedly ‘for women’ though usually produced and directed by men, fall into this category.
Media matters. The main reason for the female deficit at the top is a lack of assertiveness, underpinned by confidence. Leadership demands decisiveness, daring and strength of will – traits as common to females as to males, despite being shown to be exclusively masculine qualities in the media. Female assertiveness in films is strictly sexual, expressing their desire to find love and the security it entails. Otherwise they shown as are passive or emotional when faced with challenges. No doubt, women are prone to be more patient, receptive to others’ views and less confrontational, but it’s our patriarchal conception of leadership that considers these as weaknesses rather than strengths.
When a recent study asked American eight-year olds whether they wanted to become President, the proportion of each gender who responded in the affirmative was identical. Ten years later, nourished by a toxic diet of sitcoms and magazines that condescend the ‘weaker sex’, two thirds of those ambitious young girls had changed their minds, while the young boys largely retained the aspiration. Of course a host of careers merit ambition and we shouldn’t demonise those women who become committed stay-at-home mothers. The point is that as long as we have a political/business/media elite comprised wholly of men, women lose out. In fact everybody loses out: would the financial crisis have occurred if the major banks hadn’t been run by cack-handed, testosterone-fuelled machismos?
Let’s return to politics. The US Congress contains a lower proportion of women than its legislative counterpart in Afghanistan. Our own parliament doesn’t do much better. However, the situation may be improving. Here in Oxford our OUSU President is female, as were the last three Union Presidents. In Westminster Theresa May is the Home Secretary, an office traditionally seen as ‘unsuited’ to a woman’s temperament. And of course there was Iron Lady, the film that boasts a tremendous example of female success against the constraints of that age. All these figures are role models for young women, though tragically their imagery evades our popular Kardashian culture.
What needs to be understood – and to be fair the film did grasp this – is that the status quo isn’t conspiratorial. We aren’t a nation of misogynists, though that doesn’t preclude a misogynistic culture. There’s a certain inertia to the state of affairs that requires us to expunge the sort of lazy sexism represented by ‘lad’ culture that the sexualisation of women encourages. Miss Representation is right to malign it. Inducing cultural changes is hard but the regulation of the media is unpalatable to me. Largely it’s about awareness, learning what is and isn’t acceptable. The media matters because it catalyses the process. It can stop obsessing over what Theresa May wears rather than what she says. Some attack capitalism – drawing a causal chain between the capitalist market and pornification of media. Well, let’s turn the market on its head. We should use our purchasing power to bankrupt those newspapers and production studios that degrade women. Those choices have to be free in order to affect a genuine cultural shift. That requires a more thoughtful understanding of just how potent the media is.