Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s new film shines a light on the human cost of unregulated social media

By David Smith in Washington • June 19, 2026 • Culture

California first lady’s Miss Representation: Rise Up studies the backlash against women in the era of algorithms and deepfakes

Life moves pretty fast. It is Monday lunchtime when Jennifer Siebel Newsom drops into the Guardian’s office in Washington, just a couple of blocks from the White House, for an interview to promote her new film. Less than two hours later her husband, the California governor, Gavin Newsom, announces that the couple are under investigation by the justice department. One strand of the investigation specifically targets Siebel Newsom’s taxes and the California Partners Project, a gender equity non-profit she co-founded that received $4.3m in donations solicited by her husband. Gavin Newsom denounced the move as a “personal vendetta” directed by Donald Trump because the governor is considering running for US president. Even before the news breaks, Siebel Newsom’s verdict on Trump is withering. “I feel sorry for our country right now because when the father figure, the leader, the president is such a broken, damaging, harmful role model, everyone’s being traumatised,” she says, more in sorrow than in anger. “Everyone’s mental health is not what it could be – should be.” Siebel Newsom, who turns 52 this week, is not a politician but has long engaged in causes that are anathema to the current president. At Conservation International, she helped women in Africa and Latin America start environmentally friendly businesses. After a spell in Hollywood as an actor, she started her own production company to highlight women’s stories. Her 2011 documentary, Miss Representation, explored the media’s misrepresentation of women and girls and the knock-on effect in positions of power and influence in the US. She went on to launch the Representation Project, a non-profit pushing for cultural change. Her husband became California governor in 2019, but Siebel Newsom rejects the traditional title of “first lady” in favour of “first partner”. She reflects: “I’ve always had a career. I’ve always been a breadwinner. We don’t pay our first ladies. This is my love. This is my work. It’s my art. It’s my creativity. It’s also my advocacy and it parallel-tracks the work that I’m also doing as first partner. I’m all about centering women and children and making sure California families aren’t just surviving but thriving and I feel good about that.” Siebel Newsom’s newest film is Miss Representation: Rise Up, a bracing study of the cultural backlash against women and girls in the era of social media algorithms and AI deepfakes, the rise of the manosphere and “trad wives”, and, of course, the pernicious influence of Trump, who bragged on tape about grabbing women by the genitals and has been found liable for sexual abuse. Siebel Newsom has the clout to pull in big names: former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the senator Amy Klobuchar, the actor Jameela Jamil, and journalists Gretchen Carlson and Katie Couric are among the film’s cast of talking heads. They sound the alarm about a mental health crisis: 53% of teenage girls reported feeling persistently sad and hopeless in a 2023 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 27% of high school girls seriously considered attempting to end their life. Whereas depression was once associated with girls aged 16 or 17, now it affects them at 11, 12 and 13. Much of this is directly tied to the advent of the “like” and “share” buttons that offer a constant source of social comparison and potential exclusion. Miss Representation: Rise Up cites internal documents leaked by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, alleging that tech companies explicitly studied the neurobiology of children to take advantage of their vulnerabilities. Siebel Newsom is unsparing in her assessment. “AI and social media have been weaponised, not just to objectify and diminish women and girls’ value but to silence women and girls,” she says. “It’s harming our mental health, it’s harming our safety and it’s harming our sense of power, and it’s happening at an unprecedented rate and scale and it’s getting to girls younger and younger. We haven’t done enough to hold tech companies accountable.” The platforms have fiercely resisted accountability, shielded by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which grants them broad immunity from liability for what users post. The result is what the documentary calls a “democratisation of deepfake pornography”. AI tools, such as Elon Musk’s Grok, are being used by high school boys to generate nonconsensual, sexually explicit images of their 12- and 13-year-old female classmates. The documentary spells out the human cost of this unregulated social experiment. It tells the story of a young girl named Alexandra “Owl” Hinks, who faced relentless online bullying and sexualised demands from boys at her school, ultimately leading her to take her own life. As the spouse of Gavin Newsom, whom she refers to as “Gov”, Siebel Newsom is in the belly of the Silicon Valley beast. “I’m a firm believer that you can have innovation with guardrails and I’ve talked to the CEO of Pinterest [Bill Ready], for example, who is a leader in a positive way on understanding that when you provide guardrails, you actually force more creativity and innovation, and that’s what Gov has been trying to do with some of our legislation around AI.” For Siebel Newsom, raising four children in the shadow of Silicon Valley has required drawing hard boundaries. As the UK announces a ban on social media for children under 16, she expresses a desire for California and the US to follow suit. “I delayed giving my kids smartphones until they were 14, and my oldest two are 14 and up, and I feel like that was too soon. I thought I was being smart and I was proud of myself because they’d be like, ‘I’m the only one that doesn’t have a phone.’ I’m like, ‘Great, your mom knows what’s on the other side!’ “But if we adults have trouble putting our phone down, how can we expect kids whose brains aren’t fully formed to put the phone down? Especially kids who are different learners, or have addictive tendencies, or have ADHD. They’re more vulnerable.” The algorithmic radicalisation of young men – the so-called “manosphere” led by figures such as Andrew Tate – is a crucial component of the backlash. The documentary draws a direct line from the ubiquitousness of violent online pornography to the real-world treatment of women. Boys are indoctrinated by platforms into believing women are objects, normalising violence and misogyny. This cultural rot inevitably bleeds into the political arena. For women who step into public life, the traditional “glass ceiling” has been replaced by what one male subject in the film’s prologue vividly describes as a “ceiling made of fucking bricks”. The film notes that 40% of women across the board – and 80% of women in politics – have been targeted with harassment, rape and death threats in an attempt to silence their voices. At the same time, it argues, the patriarchy has found a way to pit women against each other, repackaging subservience as a desirable trend. Social media algorithms now heavily promote the “tradwife” movement, encouraging young women to abandon economic independence and return to traditional, submissive gender roles. “For the tradwife phenomenon, it’s like, you can be a mom, you can make great meals and you can live on a farm and you can wear pretty dresses and I want to make sure those women have a voice, not just at home but in the public sphere that isn’t just about consumerism or being in service to men only but that’s also normalising that women have so much to offer the world outside of the home – a power that’s been missing from the decision-making tables.” She adds: “As the 51% of the population that births 100% of the population, we have a role to play in shaping culture and shaping policy and shaping norms. I’m an and person versus an or.” The documentary highlights the late Charlie Kirk’s organisation, Turning Point USA, encouraging girls to get married, stop pursuing education and abandon economic independence. Siebel Newsom comments: “That’s harmful to women and girls. We should all have some form of economic independence. We shouldn’t be so dependent on others: at least it sets you up for having more options in life and also pride in pursuing your own interests outside of the home.” The alliance between this brand of reactionary rightwing politics and the billionaires of Silicon Valley has become inescapable. Musk was the biggest donor to Trump’s 2024 election campaign and joined other tech overlords at the president’s inauguration. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta was among the industry giants spotted at Sunday’s raucous Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) spectacle on Trump’s 80th birthday at the White House. Siebel Newsom says drily: “There’s some good people in tech and there were some people there that are still good people. But it’s disheartening when people you know kiss the ring of someone who is very harmful, not just to our economy but to our democracy and to our people.” Trump won two elections out of three – both against women: Clinton in 2016 and Kamala Harris in 2024. “I do believe gender played a huge role in both of their defeats,” says Siebel Newsom, before adding with a laugh: “And Russian interference.” She goes on: “As we explore in the documentary, women are essential for a thriving democracy, and when our foreign adversaries see a powerful woman rise, it’s a threat because it’s also what they’re trying to dampen and hold back because it is part of their authoritarian agenda of preserving their power and the status quo. “Our democracy would be so much better if we had more women in leadership, period, full stop. I’m not saying this needs to be 100% women. Our democracy, I believe, would thrive when we really represent the population.” Last year Michelle Obama, the former first lady, opined that America “ain’t ready” for a female president. It is a potentially awkward question for Siebel Newsom, whose husband might be the one the denies a woman – such as Harris or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – the keys to the White House in 2028. “Obviously I would like to think America is ready for a female president,” she insists. “I’m doing my part to show girls and women that they can be that and to support that value system. We just need to get more of the feminine in leadership and the feminine is in all of us, right?” Siebel Newsom pauses. Half a dozen seconds pass. She resumes: “I mean, it’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen in our lifetime, but we’ve got to get our country back and on the right track. The first step is 2026 midterms and then ’28 and hopefully right the ship and do everything we can to kind of uplift and support women, children and families and really ensure that the American dream is alive and well for everyone, not just the few.”

Source: The Guardian