Miss Representation

Growing up in a rural community in Southeast China, I did not have much media presented to me. While everyone in America grew up with Disney influences and watching television, I had none of that. My grandparents raised me for five years in China while my parents worked for more money in America. Living with grandparents that only farmed, I only knew the life of playing in mud and running the streets barefoot. I did not have female role models besides my mother, who used to work in a garment factory. Later, as I returned to America, I would go with my mother to her work, and in my eyes, she was the hardest worker there; she would eat her lunch in a flash and head back to work. I had to run around like crazy getting her more fabric for her to use and make into clothing. She would tell me that she worked so hard because there was no other job for women like her and that she couldn't let go of the job because she had to support my sister and me. I would never see my father because he worked hard too. He worked in a busy restaurant and would come home late at night, when I would be already asleep. Even though my mother works, I was thrown in the direction that women and mothers were the ones that took care of the children and the house and the men would be making the bulk of the money. Years ago, when my mother and my aunt asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I told them that I didn't know. Then they would push me in the direction that I could be a teacher, or a nurse or something that they thought a general female would be. They would say that being a CEO or a president of a company was impossible because they were jobs for men. Even though I did not agree with them, I was still afraid to challenge that. I ended up choosing to become a nurse because I though it suited me best and not because it was a typical career for a female. I do agree with the idea that the lack of female role models lead to a lack of women leaders because it is so heavily portrayed in the media that we, as women should not be as powerful as men. However, there are many female role models out there but they are not as heavily shown in the media. I think this leads us to feel like it is impossible to accomplish, to be just as powerful as men.