Blog Post 7: Women in the Golden Age of Hollywood

              Let me start my response to Miss Representation by sharing a personal story. Recently, I was talking with my best friend about what celebrities she finds attractive, to which she gave me a laundry list of names. She then returned the question, and after a few minutes of hard thought I came up empty. She finally suggested Audrey Hepburn, who sparked my mind and fantasies enough to where I gave her a list just as long back, albeit with older women of Hollywood.

              Watching this made me realize why this was so. The attitude and naturalness that many of the old school actresses encompassed gave their characters a real, honest appeal. One that made me believe the actress embodied the powerful spirit of the characters she portrayed. I could picture myself on a dinner date with them. Today, it seems that most actresses suffer from the male dominated industry and become products for an audience’s pleasure. It’s hard for me to picture how a certain actress would really act if not behind the camera. The documentary encouraged me to do some quick research on why women had such confidence and individuality in early Hollywood, and I found it was due to the positions of authority women came to have during this time, as “very little of the work had been sex-type.” (Holliday)

              I really enjoyed this documentary, it made a lot of great points and opinions on the status of our generation and how media is absorbed. What I gained from my brief research into the subject is that if we want media outlets to begin to portray women as they deserve and less as objects, the first step is sharing power between the genders in the industry.

Works Cited

         Holliday, Wendy. "Hollywood's Modern Women: Screenwriting, Work Culture, and Feminism, 1910-1940." Order No. 9603143 New York University, 1995. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Web. 22 June 2015.