Part 2- MissRep

This post is a bit of a sequel to my last one about Taylor Swift.

In MissRepresentation, one of the things we learned about was that only 16% of protagonists are female in movies/television. Even so, they are usual portrayed as sex objects. Or, even more well-known, the "fighting fuck-toy". This in the end causes gender socialization and the form of gender roles.

After hearing about all of this in the documentary, I immediately started thinking about the "Blank Space" music video again. I then thought about the comment that Abby had posted responding to it and also the comment she made to me about it in person.

Abby's first impression of my post was disgusted. She thought I had been extremely sexist and overall disagreed with what I had to say. She believed that Taylor Swift was just showing women that they need to stand of for themselves and that they can. She also thought that Taylor Swift was just doing it as a joke and I took it too seriously.

Connecting back to what I learned in MissRep I thought that Taylor was totally playing into a stereotype of women. In movies and television shows, we constantly see women portrayed as the "crazy ex girlfriend" or "physco bitch". In the video, I saw it that Taylor was showing us and her viewers that its okay to break your boyfriends car because he was on his phone during your picnic together. And not only that, but also that women act that way, and instead of being able to act maturely and talk out their issues, they resort to violence. Probably the thing that also hit me the most, is that Taylor Swift has a lot of younger fans. At their young ages they are very susceptible to influence, and especially from someone they look up to and who is famous. They would see a video like that and then they would thing its okay to act that way, and not only that but they should act that way. Why? Because Taylor Swift does.

One of the last things we learned in Miss Representation was that the media can be an instrument of change. But in order for it to make a good change, society has to really come together and try to make it happen.