It has been said that media representations often reflect the social and political concerns of the age in which they are created.

Media representations often play upon the stereotypes which society tend to accept as the representations neutralise over time due to people being exposed to the same thing over and over again.

Women were always perceived as the object of desire, which stays at home and cooks. However with the rise of feminism during the 1950s and 1960s, women had gained liberating rights which then went on to change their stereotypical image to the angel/whore. The femme fatale character was introduced in the 1950s, as women became more ‘masculine’ by taking on the ‘male’ jobs as the men went to war. In double indemnity the femme fatale is portrayed as an evil woman through the use of low key lighting, and as she holds a cigar in most scenes she is presented as a powerful woman as she holds her ‘phallus’. Her tempting attitude, alongside the smoke from the cigarette forms an enigma around her and makes her seem mysterious and more sexual. Overall, women were presented to be luring predators. The rise of feminism was heavily driven by the introduction of the contraceptive pill in 1961 which gave females more sexual freedom, it also allowed them not to bound to motherhood until they are ready for it. This also conformed to some of the issues the public were facing as the rate of back alley abortions.

However post feminism portrayals of women tended to represent women as people who self objectify themselves. To some extent this could be considered to be correct, however this can also be a negative representation of women as it still portrays them to overly sexual. Due to the dependence women have on the contraceptive pill, alongside the legal age that the government has put on when people are allowed to have intercourse, teenage pregnancy has soared. Underage and pregnant follows the lives of teenagers who face different problems during pregnancy, whether that be due to their age, of that the father of the child is no longer in the picture. Personal interviews with the pregnant teenagers allow the viewers to understand that sometimes it is very hard for these mothers. Juno was released in 2007 and the protagonist was a 16 year old mother to be. Stereotypically we would expect pregnant teenagers to consist of those from ethnic minority groups; however Juno is from a respectable white background. This enabled viewers to understand that underage mothers can be from various backgrounds. However in the end of Juno, she puts her baby up for adoption and no longer has to deal with the issues she would have faced with motherhood. In reality most of these girls are forced to keep their babies and give up their whole lives for them.