“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any”. – Alice Walker

A few months ago I watched a brilliant documentary called “Miss Representation“. Written and directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the award-winning film exposes how mainstream media contribute to the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence in America. I have been meaning to write about the documentary for months yet had left it in the back burner until the Olympics began and some of the media coverage of the women althetes outraged me.

Two recent articles in particular (“Medals aren’t enough: Women athletes still have to sell sexiness” and “Scantily Clad Russian Olympians Are Making Us Uncomfortable“) made my anger flair and made me realize that as a society if women’s rights are ever going to improve, me must stop looking at them as sex objects. Certainly one can argue that it is in our biology and nature. Men will always covet and admire women and their bodies. Yet what I want to argue is that it is fine to admire a woman’s beauty but our powerful media does not need to continue to objectify women. It has come to the point where it is so commonplace that one often turns a blind eye to it. Let’s face it sex sells.