Cape Cod Water

In my AP Language and Composition class we recently watched the movie Miss Representation, a documentary about how today’s media sets up women for failure in business and politics by presenting them as weaker and less able than men. I really think that this is a very important movie that everyone should watch, especially for anyone out there who still thinks that women are inferior to women. The documentary is extremely informative, and while it provides plenty of facts and figures, some of them don’t seem altogether too realistic.

One statistic I was hesitant to accept from the film was that “About 25% of girls will experience teen dating violence [sometime in their lives]”. For me that figure seemed a little high, even though I know that teen dating violence is unfortunately a relatively common occurrence in today’s society. If you look at the situation objectively, it doesn’t really seem likely that 1 in 4 high school girls would be getting hurt by her boyfriend. This might be because I go to a high school where these things aren’t common, or because the specific group of friends I’m exposed to aren’t involved in abusive relationships. But this could also be a high statistic because of the simple fact that the data has been over-exaggerated and skewed.

After doing some research on the figures presented in Miss Representation, I found out more about the data collected on teen dating violence. The research for this statistic was done mainly by Jay G. Silverman, an author who has written about domestic violence and its influence on family life. Although he is obviously qualified  and has a degree in his research, there are many places where I think potential was evident for inflated data.

What I found was that there was a few surveys done by Silverman, the latest one completed by 2186 high-school girls in the Massachusetts area in 1999. First off, these records were outdated by 12 years when the documentary was premiered, and obviously a lot could have changed in that time (whether that be an increase or decrease in teen dating abuse cases). In addition, a sample of only two thousand students is not representative sample of the entire country. Not only is it a small number, but also all the girls participating in the study were from the same area, which could play a role in the findings. Maybe the girls in Massachusetts are just more attracted to the same douchebags who will end up being abusive. There might just be something in the Cape Cod water.

In all seriousness though, I think the term “dating violence” should really be defined here. Obviously hitting and punching is considered violence, but what about hugs that are too tight, or rougher make-out sessions? I know it sounds ridiculous, but it’s all in the way that the survey questions are posed. Overall, while the results of the studies done on teen dating violence could be an accurate representation of American females, chances are high that they might be exaggerated to catch the attention of the viewers in documentaries and other reports.

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