Mr. & Miss Represented: How the media mistakes nurture and nature

The documentary film, MissRepresentation, has received a lot of attention at film festivals and even by Oprah Winfrey’s network OWN. The stated mission of the film on its website is to “…explore how the media’s misrepresentations of women have led to the underrepresentation of women in positions of power and influence.” The movie centers around the exploitation of women’s bodies in advertising, and how this leads girls and boys to think the most important trait of any woman is her body.

There is scientific evidence that our environments affect our personalities. This is what is called the nurture theory of behavior (as opposed to nurture.)

Some scientists think that people behave as they do according to genetic predispositions or even “animal instincts.” This is known as the “nature” theory of human behavior. Other scientists believe that people think and behave in certain ways because they are taught to do so. This is known as the “nurture” theory of human behavior. Fast-growing understanding of the human genome has recently made it clear that both sides are partly right. Nature endows us with inborn abilities and traits; nurture takes these genetic tendencies and molds them as we learn and mature. – Kimberly Powell, Nature vs. Nurture: Are We Really Born That Way?

So the question is, to what extent are men and women naturally different? To what extent is the media teaching them to be different? This is a difficult question to answer, because it’s difficult to pin down the relationship between culture and media. Women and men are treated differently, however, whether the cause is media driven or culture driven.

…Scientists dressed newborns in gender-neutral clothes and misled adults about their sex. The adults described the “boys” (actually girls) as angry or distressed more often than did adults who thought they were observing girls, and described the “girls” (actually boys) as happy and socially engaged more than adults who knew the babies were boys. Dozens of such disguised-gender experiments have shown that adults perceive baby boys and girls differently, seeing identical behavior through a gender-tinted lens. – Sharon Begley, Claims of sex differences fall apart

There is clearly a bias here, but the real harm comes in what affect this can have on the developing brains of children. It affects what we tell and allow girls or boys to accomplish.

In another study, mothers estimated how steep a slope their 11-month-olds could crawl down. Moms of boys got it right to within one degree; moms of girls underestimated what their daughters could do by nine degrees, even though there are no differences in the motor skills of infant boys and girls. But that prejudice may cause parents to unconsciously limit their daughter’s physical activity. How we perceive children—sociable or remote, physically bold or reticent—shapes how we treat them and therefore what experiences we give them. Since life leaves footprints on the very structure and function of the brain, these various experiences produce sex differences in adult behavior and brains—the result not of innate and inborn nature but of nurture. - Sharon Begley, Claims of sex differences fall apart

Gender discrimination doesn’t just affect girls, though. As the first experiment suggests, we actually expect men to be more aggressive, less social, and less in tuned with their emotions.

I think it’s safe to say that whether or not media is the origin of gender discrimination (it is probably not), the media helps perpetuate already ingrained differences between men and women in American culture.