coco

originally posted on PersephoneMagazine.com

You can’t be what you can’t see. This is the a quote by Marie Wilson, President and Founder of The White House Project and the tag line for Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s documentary, Miss Representation, a film that looks at the media’s impact on the American discourse of women’s bodies, women in power and the effect of internalization of being sold the same standards of what women should be,  year after year. A thought-provoking, explicit film that I wish my words could even give slight justice too–one that every woman should be required to see and is currently being lined up for screenings for Rupert Murdoch, the Library of Congress, and edited into shorter versions to be shown in high schools, middle school and grade schools across America. It is more than a film, it is a start to a much-needed reform of education , collective thinkin,g and a continuing of the great work of powerful women leaders in this country.

Newsom began the film when she was pregnant with her first daughter , Montana, after examining her own internalized body dysmorphia and supposed place in the world. From the idea of absolute perfection as a coping mechanism after her older sisters death, to an eating disorder and sexual assault that emotionally ravaged a few years of her young adult life, to her experience as an actress in Hollywood where she was specifically told to alter her appearance, lie about ...