Three students took a group project one step further by creating a campus-wide event to raise awareness about the oppression of women at the Women in the Media presentation on Thurs. May 1.

As a part of Dr. Susan Maxam’s spring 2014 course, Women’s Activism For Peace and Justice, a group project prompted the students to create awareness for ways in which women are oppressed within society.

Students Nihal Qawasmi, Mariah Jusino, Fleur Louisy, Maricela Cobos, and Maltha Romano centered their group project on the media’s portrayal of women. Qawasami, Jusino, and Lousy brought the project beyond the required assignment and out into the Pace community.

In an extension of the project, Maxam’s students created an event with the screening of Killing Us Softly (IV), a movie included in a series of documentaries created by Jean Kilbourne in an effort to raise awareness about the unrealistic and disrespectful ways in which women are represented through the media.

“I am very proud of these young women for taking the project a step further in order to expose the issue to a larger group of their peers,” Assistant Vice President for Undergraduate Education Maxam said.

In response to viewing the documentary, much of the audience was angered and aggravated by the new view of the media’s messages regarding women.

“I think it opens [society’s] eyes to a perspective that they have never seen,” freshman political science and communications major Qawasami said. “It’s powerful because it gets under your skin and challenges you to go out and do something.”

Students said that they tended not to realize how much of an impact the media has in today’s society.

“Because we are so used to the media, many do not show how much it bothers them. They are adjusted to something that is everywhere,” one student said in the discussion that followed the documentary.

Similarly, many students seemed to be enlightened to the horrors of the media’s effect on the female and male perspective of beauty.

Women are sexualized for commercial gain and are morphed into an impossible female beauty created by retouching and cosmetic surgeries, according to Kilbourne. In an age of advertising that sacrifices the wealth in order to advance monetarily, where women become objects dehumanized for someone else’s pleasure, it is the portrayal of women within the media that results in many of today’s major psychological issues.

The American Psychological Association states that the exposure to the negative representations of the human figure and wealth within the media and advertisements, may lead to three of the top psychologically prevalent disorders in the United States: eating disorders, depression, and low self-esteem.

“Watching the video made me excited. Educating the public in order to help build self-esteem and not cut it down is important. I am very passionate about the topic and would love to see more people representing themselves and being involved,” sophomore nursing major Jennifer Robertson said. “It is important for students in particular, especially here at Pace, to express their opinions and take a stand for their own beliefs.”