Translator: Denise RQ Reviewer: Lena Clemente
(Video starts) [The most common way people give up their power
[is by thinking they don't have any. -Alice Walker]
Pat Mitchell: The media is the message and the messenger,
and increasingly, a powerful one.
Jim Stayer: In a world of a million channels,
people try to do more shocking and shocking things
to break through the clutter.
They resort to violent images, or sexually offensive images,
or demeaning images.
Maria: When is it going to be enough?
[The media is sending a dangerous message to young people]
Ariella: There is no appreciation for women intellectuals.
It's all about the body not about the brain.
Fox News anchor: You all saw the photo from the weekend of Hillary
looking so haggard, and what, looking like 92 years old?
Fox News anchor 2: Breast implants. Did you have them or not?
Host: If you waterboarded Nancy Pelosi, she wouldn't admit the plastic surgery.
Jennifer Pozner: The fact
that media are so derogatory to the most powerful women in the country
then what is it say about media's ability to take any women in America seriously?
[The consequences are dire]
Alexis: I have close friends that will go to the bathroom
and put on like ten pounds of make-up. You know, and you are at school to learn.
Lisa Ling: As a culture,
women are brought up to be fundamentally insecure.
Jane Fonda: Media creates consciousness.
And if what gets put out there that creates our consciousness
is determined by men, we are not going to make any progress.
C. Heldman: Little boys and little girls, when they are seven years old,
an equal number want to be president of the Unites States when they grow up.
But then you ask the same question when they are 15, and you see
this massive gap emerging.
[Women make up 51% of the U.S. population Yet comprise only 17% of Congress]
Cory Booker: We are shortchanging voices that are urgently needed in public forums
from ever getting to the table.
[At this rate, women may not achieve parity for 500 years]
C. Rice: As the most powerful country in the world, if we are not standing
for the right values and for the right principles; that's a loss for the world.
Host: You get a woman in the Oval Office, most powerful person in the world,
what's the downside?
Man: You mean besides the PMS and the mood swings?
M.Cho: The media treats women like s**t,
and it's horrible, and I don't know how we survived it, how we rise about it.
[How do we change it?]
Marie Wilson: You can't be what you can't see.
Rosario Dawson: It's extremely important for women to be writing their own stories
and giving them to people to really emotionally be impacted by.
Katie Couric: The media can be an instrument of change,
it can awaken people and change minds.
It depends on who's piloting the plane.
[MISREPRESENTATION - MISS REPRESENTATION]
(Video ends)
(On stage) Jennifer Siebel Newsom: You really can't be what you can't see.
How many of us see inspiration
in the media's messages for our daughters and our sons?
We made "Miss Representation" to underscore this point.
When my daughter Montana was born,
and my husband Gavin Newsom was mayor of San Francisco,
not surprisingly, Montana received
many comments on her looks and lots of pink.
A little over a year and a half later, when our son Hunter was born,
Hunter received fewer comments on his appearance, lots of blue,
and interestingly, quite a few bibs, onesies, and silver cups,
all displaying White House insignia.
(Laughter)
He even received a letter from the President and the First Lady,
and separately, a letter from the Vice President and Second Lady
welcoming him into the world,
suggesting that the world was his oyster and that he was its pearl;
that he could do and be anything.
We were extremely appreciative of such gifts even though secretly,
I wondered why the White House hadn't sent such gifts to Montana.
And then, I had an epiphany:
whereupon in opening yet another package for Hunter,
I discovered a blue T-shirt
with messaging in large caps, "Future President."
"Wow!", I thought.
Montana, our eldest but also our girl didn't even receive the suggestion
that she too could be president,
that her opportunities in life were limitless.
It's innocent acts or non acts like this that happened every day
that sound very subliminal messages to our daughters and sons
right out out of the womb about who they can and cannot be.
And our young girls, who hear
all those comments about their looks and so few about our capacity to lead
are handicapped with the notion that their value lies in their beauty
while their brothers and male peers learn early on
that they are our natural-born leaders.
Our biological differences aside,
it really does start with something as simple as a T-shirt and dressing up.
Recently, I was perusing costumes available for my daughter's school parade,
and I noticed that all the girls' costumes available
relied on and looked around sexuality and fairy princesses,
while the boys were all veered towards violence and power.
It struck me the connection
between how we raise our daughters to manipulate their bodies
and our sons to master their environments.
Mind you, I am not immune to our culture's messaging,
and thinking that I was more conscious than most,
I decided to choose animal costumes, and instinctively, I chose
a lamb for my daughter
(Laughter)
and a lion for my son.
(Laughter)
Incredible, right?
Gender norms are so normalized in all of us
that we're not even conscious of them.
Rather, we're desensitized to them,
and the marketplace just reinforces a culture
that devalues our women and girls
while expanding the opportunities available to our men and boys.
And guess what?
We're all complicit,
especially those of us who are so busy
running dual income households and trying to make ends meet
that we forget about the other parent in the room;
we forget about media, the most powerful, cultural messenger of all
and its impact on our kids.
Did you know that today's teens
consume ten hours and 45 minutes of media a day?
Well, it's true.
Between the iPad, the iPhone, video games,
and marketers selling us at the bus stop,
in the magazine stance, and on the freeways,
our kids are being sold violence and sex 24/7.
And it's only gotten worse
with the advent of infotainment and reality TV.
Just look at TV shows
like "Keeping Up with the Kardashians," "Bad Girls Club," and "Jersey Shore's,"
and I shouldn't have to remind you
that Americans aren't the only ones consuming this bad behavior.
But really what's so dangerous and interesting to think about
is the fact that children are especially vulnerable
to the media's messages.
In fact,
children's brains aren't fully formed until there are in their early 20s,
so to suggest that a child as young as 12 years old
has the same emotional and intellectual maturity as adults
is nuts.
They have different interpretive abilities,
they have different emotional abilities,
and they're a much more vulnerable class of citizens.
So is it any wonder that as the media has become omnipresent in our society?
We're seeing an increase in cutting,
bullying, eating disorders,
plastic surgery amongst youth,
depression, anxiety, and date rape amongst our teens.
I think it's pretty safe to say that the media is harming our children.
Truth be told, it's killing our daughters ambition
and destroying empathy and emotion in our sons.
I remember when I started out in Hollywood at the ripe old age of 28,
and yes, that is old by Hollywood standards.
I was told at the time by my agent
to lie about my age and to take my MBA off my resume.
I didn't do either, but my confidence was really shaken
as I realized that everything I had worked for and done in my life
had no value in that town.
I'm talking about a town in an industry that informs American cultural values
and then exports those values to the rest of the world.
So, forget the Stanford BA and MBA;
forget having worked with Bushman and indigenous communities
in Africa and Latin America;
and forget being a starter on the junior national soccer team.
If you can make a sex tape and party with the best of them,
you can be catapulted into celebritydom overnight,
and that's success in our country.
At least that's what Hollywood media tells us.
And as I go back to the reality shows,
I need not remind you
that Americans aren't the only ones consuming this tabloid trash.
A Harvard study conducted discovered
that when "Melrose Place" and "90210,"
two American TV shows in particular arrived in Fiji,
a country that embraced fuller bodies as the norm,
the Fijian female population
experienced for the first time an epidemic of eating disorders.
All because it appeared
that American TV was celebrating one body type: a very skinny body type.
Is this really the impact we want to have overseas
as one of the most innovative and powerful countries in the world?
Do we not have a moral standard?
Do we not have a role to be better ambassadors?
Well, many in positions of power and influence in media,
apparently don't think so.
They base their decisions solely on the mighty dollar
regardless of a cost to society.
One wonders why this is.
Well, simply put,
it's because we have so few women and such limited diversity
in our media leadership.
And of course, not all men and women think alike,
but if we know that 3% of media positions of clout
of the decision-makers and media are made by women,
then that means that 97%
of what you watch, read, and hear
comes from the male perspective.
Well, that's wrong.
It's wrong because media creates culture.
As a mother of two very young children, I'm extremely frightened by this all.
In fact, I'm so discouraged by it all
that I started to ask some questions.
First and foremost, I wanted to know
where have all the smart girls gone?
The ones who my daughter would aspire to be like,
the ones who my son would grow up to respect,
the ones who are outperforming and out-graduating their male peers
in college and graduate schools,
the ones who should be in the running
to lead Fortune 500 companies and sit on their boards,
the ones who deserve to grace the covers of our national magazines
and star in their own television shows?
Something wasn't adding up,
and when I looked at the facts, and the way media represents women,
I noted that women's progress in our country had stalled.
In fact, it has gone backwards.
And this is pervasive way beyond Hollywood.
In fact, men occupy 80 to 95+ % of the top decision-making positions
in American politics, business,
religion, military, culture, media, and entertainment.
A disparity that is hard to pay attention to
when one woman makes it to the top,
which brings me to the 2008 presidential campaign.
I was appalled by the press's double standards,
their denigrations, and their demeaning attacks
on both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.
For instance, Hillary Clinton could have a breakthrough speech
on health care reform or foreign policy.
And what are the headlines?
Has she gained or lost weight,
and what hairstyle is she sporting these days.
Meanwhile, do you remember the cover of Newsweek magazine
and Sarah Palin's short shorts?
There is no question that aesthetics trumped substance.
To quote the President of Fox News, Roger Ailes,
"The only reason I put her - Sarah Palin - on
was because she was hot and got ratings."
Seriously?
Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the middle of a major cultural backlash
against women's progress,
and the media is wittingly or unwittingly leading the charge and holding us back.
This is serious, and this is dangerous.
And you know what? We all should be appalled.
I decided to do something about it - and you should, too -
so we made "Miss Representation" to be a catalyst for cultural change,
and we are changing behavior one individual at a time.
In fact, all across the country and increasingly the globe,
people are screening "Miss Rpresentation"
and recognizing their power to effect change.
In Park City, Utah, a father who saw "The Phone" was so so enraged
that he called into our office
to make sure the film was available to his local community,
and he's currently raising money
for a national father-daughter public service announcement.
In Manhattan, New York, a woman was so enraged
by a pornographic ad at the bus stop at her daughter's school
that she called into Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office,
and the next day, the ad was pulled down.
In San Francisco, California, a working mother was so upset
about an ad, a commercial that demeaned motherhood
that she wrote a letter to the CEO of Procter & Gamble,
and that ad was pulled down the next week.
Meanwhile, all across the country, youth are signing up to be
"Miss Representation" reps for social change,
and they are educating, empowering, and activating their peers
to stand up to sexism in their daily lives.
This is what happens when we recognize our power as citizens,
and "Miss Representation" further reminds us
to recognize our power as consumers.
As 86% of consumers, we, women need to consume better,
we need to consume more consciously;
we vote with our dollar, and we vote with our media choices.
We stand up when we witness an injustice in the marketplace
whether it's an ad, a commercial, the news, or TV program,
and we say we don't have to consume that.
We say this is a disgrace to our culture.
In fact, we could put a product or program out of business overnight if we so choose.
So we support the good media, the media that uplifts and encourages us,
and we challenge the bad media, the media that limits and demeans us.
There's too much at stake to not consume responsibly.
We, all of us are in the driver's seat here.
At missrepresentation.org,
our core mission
is to awaken consciousness and shift behavior toward media.
Whether we like it or not, we're all in a relationship with the media,
and like any good relationship,
you only get out of it what you put into it.
So, let's demand a media culture that uplifts us all,
that inspires my daughter and your daughters
to be president of the United States,
that encourages my son and your sons to be emphatic, nurturing partners.
It's really up to us,
but it requires action, and it requires it now.
Each and every one of us has the capacity to effect change,
so join us; together we will succeed.
Thank you.
(Applause)