In the 21st century you would not expect representation in the media to still be an issue. 45 percent of Americans believe that society prefers men over women (“Chapter 2: Equal Treatment for Men and Women.” ). In an international study conducted by the Pew Institute of Research out of the countries surveyed most believe in equality for men and women yet few actually believe it has been achieved (Shannon). However, representation of women throughout the history of media has not changed very much. Shows like I Love Lucy and The Mary Tyler Moore Show paved the way for women in television (Armstrong). More recently Amy Poehler and Tina Fey have picked up the reins to promote feminist shows, yet shows like Sex in the City promote the belief that women are shallow and only focused on materialistic things. Female representation benefits society because it promotes gender equality, shows a broad spectrum of different women, and enhances the likelihood of girls joining a diverse array of careers.

When I was very young I watched shows like Dora the Explorer and Sesame Street. Dora inspired me because she was a young girl who went on fantastic adventures and defeated evil like Swiper on a daily basis. Through elementary school I watched shows like Hannah Montana and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. There are distinct differences between these two shows. Hannah Montana was focused around petty arguments between friends and stereotypical ideas about “girly girls”. Suite Life was about twin boys who pulled pranks in a hotel the lived in. Sure there were still arguments but for the most part they were just boys having fun. The difference between a show that made me want to go on adventures and be an explorer and a show that made me believe I had to be interested in clothes and fighting with my friends was very apparent to my mother and even she noticed that when my sisters and I watched Hannah Montana we were more likely to argue. Now that I’m older I tend to watch more shows like 30 Rock and Parks and Rec, shows that depict women in positions of power. Leslie Knope is the deputy director of a parks service in Indiana and Liz Lemon is a writer for a big television show. Both of these shows focus on the growth of women and the daily struggles they face against sexism. 

In early television there were a lot of taboos. Women and men could not be shown sleeping in the same bed together, women could not wear pants or show their navels, and same-sex marriage (Reina). Mary Kay and Johnny showed a man and woman sharing a bed for the first time in 1947, Cher showed her bellybutton for the first time on tv in the early 70s, and the first same-sex marriage was in 1991 on the show Roc (Reina). My favorite actress, Mary Tyler Moore, actually fought for her right to wear pants and the network allowed it only for one scene of each show of The Dick Van Dyke Show. These taboos have a lot to do with limiting women. Now those taboos have been broken and the focus is on diversity for women.

Besides 30 Rock and Parks and Rec, women are still placed in the role of mother, housewife, nurse, teacher, and other supporting roles. What we need is more women portrayed as doctors, engineers, and military leaders. Movies that pass the Bechdal-Wallace test feature two women, who talk to each other, about something other than a man (McKinney). Seems simple right? Wrong. A third of movies released in 2016 failed the Bechdal test (McKinney). Captain America Civil War, which features three named female characters, just barely passes the Bechdal test (McKinney). Other movies like Deadpool, The Jungle Book, and The Angry Birds Movie all failed the test (McKinney).

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gives a beautiful example of why representation is important in her TED talk “The Danger of a Single Story”. While her talk is about the representation between Africa and American novels it fits well with this subject. She talks about how when she was little she would write stories about little girls who played in the snow and ate apples despite the fact that she had never seen snow and ate mangoes. She wrote what she had read. Since most of the stories she had read were about little girls in America that is what she wrote about (Adichie). This shows the danger behind limited representation. Young children are very impressionable. They start out with a blank slate and the things the read, see, and hear all shape the people they grow up to be. If they are raised around sexism, or racism, or homophobia then that will be their belief in life, unless they go out into the world to discover other points of view. 

Parks and Rec is a show I would argue depicts women in strong leadership roles and humorously portrays the hardships of dealing with sexism. Robyn Swink did a study about 30 Rock and Parks and Rec and the understanding of their feminist undertones and post-feminist understanding (Swink). Feminism is the belief that women and men should be equal in economics, politics, and social situations. Post-feminism is an era where the focus is more on individual rather than group concerns and goes back to privilege surrounding white women with serious antifeminist sentiments (Swink). Swink conducted interviews with participants who watched shows like 30 Rock and Parks and Rec and drew conclusions based on audience sentiment. Her conclusion was that more viewers gravitated to Leslie Knope and her success and general “girl power” attitude, while simultaneously favoring the male characters for the actual comedy and feminism (Swink).

In our media driven society, the levels of feminism can be measured using female representation. Many people would argue that we do not need feminism, that women and men have achieved equality or even that men are inherently better than women and thus feminism will never succeed. The idea that women do not need feminism comes from a place of privilege or the belief that since something does not affect you personally that it is not an issue. Another belief is that feminism is the belief that women are better than men or misandry. In a society where female directors are a minority and actresses are routinely paid less for their work feminism is still working to achieve equality. Emily Matters wrote a piece on why she doesn’t need feminism and the underlying tone is that feminism doesn’t work, that it hasn’t helped to stop rape or violence against women because men are too animalistic (Matters). I do not believe this is true. Males just like females learn by observation. If they observe objectification of women then they will grow up believing that women are objects for them to take advantage of. 

The only way for this to change is for society to demand it. Media, like almost everything else in the world, works like capitalism. Whatever the consumers demand is what’s going to be made. If there is a higher demand for female led TV shows and movies, then the media will supply that. The new Wonder Woman movie is set to be released this June. From what can be gathered from the previews this will not be about Diana, the princess of the Amazons, finding a man, falling in love, and living happily ever after. Her central conflict is in discovering who or what she is, something many girls can relate to. 

It’s time for the media to stop portraying girls as one dimensional, shallow, and materialistic. Some stereotypical conflicts that girls deal with in videos is guys not liking them or their friend liking the same one as them. Typically, these problems can be solved by a makeover. Not Another Teen Movie points out some of these issues. Satirically, a girl, who can only be described as a plain jane, who comes from a meager background gets taken for a joke by Jake the jock who takes it upon himself to turn her into a prom queen (“Not Another Teen Movie, 2001). Yada yada yada, girl finds out, gets hurt, they end up together at the end because he’s all she ever wanted. There’s a reason films like these are called chick flicks because only girls could possibly relate, but I should tell you they get boring over and over. Chick flicks don’t get academy awards, movies with complex characters and historical films get awards. 

One of my favorite shows, Big Bang Theory, portrays women in science. As a self-described science fanatic, it makes me feel empowered to see women as leaders in their field. Mayim Bialik plays neuroscientist Amy Farrah Fowler on the show, but off the show she actually has a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA. As if to illustrate the issue perfectly, in an interview she is assumed to not know anything about calculus when in reality she is an accomplished scientist (TheSAGAwards). In psychology, there is a term called gender constancy. By age three to four, children associate many objects with being either male or female and as they age to six and seven they attribute certain roles as being male or female (Arnett). So it’s not completely our fault it’s how we’re raised, but perhaps this can all be changed.

While many consider Hollywood to be a liberal haven, it still has far to go for women’s equality both on the screen and behind the screen. Men dominate strong, complex roles while women are cast as supporting characters. There are more male directors and producers than females and male productions get far more publicity than female productions. Women have to try harder and be more qualified than their male counterparts just to be considered “equal”. While many of the taboos have been broken the stereotype still remains. 

The question comes down to what are we going to do about it. As one person it seems like such a big issue to tackle, but as a conglomerate it becomes much easier. While some people consider boycotts and protests as ineffective, the effect of withholding money from something is very strong. Just as many people left Wells Fargo because the Dakota Access Pipeline issue to force them to try and get them to stop investing the same can work for media. Stop watching shows that don’t support women and their ratings will start to drop. Don’t go to movies that pigeonhole women and their profits will tank. People didn’t see A Dog’s Purpose because of a video portraying the mistreatment of a dog and this hurt their prospective hit movie (“A Dog’s Purpose…). If people started to care about the mistreatment of women as they care for the mistreatment of animals we would see a huge shift in the way women are portrayed. 
