Miss Representation<\/a>,<\/em> asks powerful women in today\u2019s society to explain how the media represents women. Their conclusion? Basically everything’s\u00a0 \u201cabout the body, not the brain.\u201d The media places photos everywhere of women that have an unattainable beauty because of the way we use photo-editing tools. Thus America is presented with a limited portrayal of women: skinny.<\/p>\nAnd did you know that 8-10 year old kids have the same mental capacity as a 24 year old? Neither did I. The brain doesn\u2019t fully develop until well into your 20s. That means that images we see at a young age imprint into our brains and affect us into our later years. Girls see skinny, scantily clad women and learn to see themselves as objects. Meanwhile, boys see these same images and learn to see women as objects too. It\u2019s a vicious circle that we all want to stop but don\u2019t know how.<\/p>\n
Well, the panelists had a few ideas on how to break the cycle. President Olsen said the shows that portray women in a derogatory manner are the shows you don\u2019t need to watch. The Kardashians, Toddlers in Tiaras, The Bachelor and shows of the same content all show women in a manor that make women feel like they need to be pretty in order to get anywhere in life. Other ideas are to boycott magazines, make better choices about the entertainment you watch, read or listen to and choose media that has strong female characters instead of the mainstream nonsense we buy into.<\/p>\n
A student at the event asked, \u201cHow are we meant to change this when women and men receive backlash for doing what they love or express themselves in a way that others don\u2019t like?\u201d The brilliant response to this question: \u201cYou are going to receive backlash in everything you do. The only thing you can do is to allow your passion to push you through to do what you want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Remember how I said my aunt was on this panel? Well, she was there because she is a Women\u2019s Health Nurse Practitioner who works in the WSU Health Services office. There she sees patients and answers the many questions people have about their bodies. At the panel she spoke up, saying “I receive many girls in my office who ask me if they are ‘normal.’ Everyone is normal. We are all different but that doesn\u2019t mean that our differences are not normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
This goes for guys as well. Men are conditioned to be hard-faced and to shield their emotions from everyone around them. They are taught that in order for them to be successful they need to have a nice car, dress a certain way, make a ton of money and be smarter than everyone around them. But, guys, do you really want to be that way? Having no one know what you are actually feeling and striving for a life you really don\u2019t want?<\/p>\n
As President Olsen said at the end of the panel: \u201cCollege is a time for self discovery, so go find yourself.\u201d That’s definitely what I plan to do. Will you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Winona State University<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wellness-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7PQJv-cA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6771,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780\/revisions\/6771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}