Empowering My Ass By Gaby Del Valle

The author has many weaknesses and strengths. As said before, the author lacks the differing of other viewpoints and also more facts. Although, the author does a great job of of clarifying her passion for the subject and making it clear that this is an emotional subject on her part. She provides the right information to prove that she is confident in this subject, but not enough information to prove that other people have a different viewpoint on the subject.

Jean Kilbourne is an advocate for women and is leading a movement to change the way women are viewed in advertising. She opens up the curtains to reveal the hard truth we choose to ignore or even are too obtuse to notice. Women are objectified, materialized, and over-sexualized in order to sell clothes, products, ideas and more. As a woman, I agree with the position Kilbourne presents throughout her documentary Killing Us Softly 4: The Advertising’s Image of Women (2010) and her TEDx Talk The Dangerous Ways Ads See Women (2014.) She demonstrates time and again that these advertisements are dangerous and lead to unrealistic expectations of women.

In “The Fashion Industry: Free to be an Individual” by Hannah Berry, Hannah emphasizes how social media especially advertisements pressure females to use certain product to in order to be considered beautiful. She also acknowledges the current effort of advertisement today to more realistically depicts of women. In addition, these advertisements use the modern women look to advertise products to increase women self-esteem and to encourage women to be comfortable with one’s image.

In “Two Ways a Woman Can get Hurt: Advertising and Violence,” the author Jean Kilbourne describes how advertising and violence is a big problem for women. Although her piece is a little scrambled, she tries to organize it with different types of advertisement. Women are seen as sex objects when it comes to advertising name brand products. Corporate representatives justify selling and marketing for a product by how a woman looks. Kilbourne explains how the media is a big influence on how men perceive women. Kilbourne tries to prove her point by bashing on advertising agencies and their motives to successfully sell a product. Kilbourne’s affirmation towards advertisements leaves you no doubt that she is against them.

In our society today a business is not a business without an advertisement. These advertisements advertise what American’s want and desire in their lives. According to Jack Solomon in his essay, “Master’s of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising,” Jack Solomon claims: “Because ours is a highly diverse, pluralistic society, various advertisements may say different things depending on their intended audiences, but in every case they say something about America, about the status of our hopes, fears, desires, and beliefs”(Solomon). Advertisers continue to promote the American dream of what a women’s body should look like. They advertise their products in hopes for consumers to buy them, so they can look like the models pictures in the ads. Behind these ads, advertisers tend to picture flawless unrealistic woman with the help of Photoshop. In our society today to look like a model is an American dream and can be the reasons why we fantasizes and buy these products being advertised. “America’s consumer economy runs on desire, and advertising stokes the engines by transforming common objects;signs of all things that Americans covet most”(Solomon).

Whether we realize it or not, we are constantly surrounded by advertisements. On average, we are exposed to approximately 3,000 ads per day, through logos, billboards, and television commercials, even our choices of brands. But in today’s society, one of the most used and influential tools of advertising are women. But the unfortunate thing is that women are not just viewed as actresses in these ads but as objects for people to look at, use, abuse, and more. In her fourth installment in a line of documentaries, “Killing Us Softly 4,” Jean Kilbourne explains the influence of advertising women and popular culture, and its relationship to gender violence, sexism and racism, and eating disorders.

Jean Kilbourne’s film, Killing Us Softly 4, depicts the way the females are shown in advertisements. She discusses how advertisement sell concepts of normalcy and what it means to be a “male” and a “female.” One of her main arguments focuses on how women aspire to achieve the physical perfection that is portrayed in advertisements but this perfection is actually artificially created through Photoshop and other editing tools. Women in advertisements are often objectified as weak, skinny, and beautiful while men are often portrayed as bigger and stronger. Advertisements utilize the setting, the position of the people in the advertisements, and the products to appeal to the unconscious aspect

The syntax that he uses may be more informal instead of formal academic language. He also uses good organizational structure to support his argument. He frequently initiates a new idea with a hook to get the readers attention or a transitionary phrases to segway into new ideas which makes the reading flow well. Then the idea is supported by either an anecdote from people or scholars that were interviewed or a statistic. This helps make his reasoning come across as persuasive and maybe bring resemblance to the readers own experiences that they can relate

Approximately half way through reading the article a red flag goes up. One of the major features of an argumentative article are the facts and citations. Other than citing the two pictures used in the article, only one statement can be traced to a credible source. Jones quotes Melanie Moore, a psychologist to provide a strong piece of evidence. Even though this is the only outside source used it is powerful given her background in psychology. Logos play a major roll in giving the article credibility. Whilst a reader is seeing a lack of evidence from outside sources to back up an argument, they assume it is just made up and not reliable. Granting Jones seems to use only one source for his article, that does not necessarily mean he does not state any evidence or logos.

The info in the article is reliable as it uses authentic data sources. Some of the data sources used are:

Advertisements are intended to make their audience feel remarkable if and only if they purchase what is being publicized. In 2005, Dove launched a “Real Beauty” campaign in an effort to reassure women of their physical beauty. The campaign featured women of all different shapes and sizes to connect with each body type. However, this campaign would not be advantageous to both the consumers and advertisers if the advertisers did not get their fair share. Gloria Steinem, author of “Sex, Lies, and Advertising,” is strongly challenged by Dove’s campaign by exemplifying how Ms., a magazine that Gloria was co-founder of, eliminated advertisements in order to maintain journalistic integrity. However, Jennifer L. Pozner, author of “Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ Backlash,” utterly supports Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign by concurring with Dove’s powerful message of confidence. Despite their opposing views on advertisements, both women share a common ground: Advocating the empowerment of women.

Also there were multiple occasions where it felt like the article was lacking important information or where Cappelli could have backed up what he said by supplying facts and citing the source. Cappelli also failed to cite some of the facts he did have, leading you to question the validity of the information provided. Also the language, that Cappelli uses is perfect for this article, as his choice of words is precise thoughtful. The words he chose made it an easy read for readers of all levels. Cappelli masterfully set up a very persuasive piece.

Sexualizaton and objectification in the advertisements we see and the media we watch has become a very strong issue in our society. With the idea that “sex sells”, consumers don’t even realize that they’re not viewing the advertisements for what they are, but for the women (or men) that are being portrayed in a very erotic way, posed with whatever product they were hired to sell. Many articles have been written so far to challenge and assess this problem, but one written by Jean Kilbourne (1999), “”Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt”: Advertising and Violence” holds an extensive amount of authority. Using her personal experience with the subject, as well as studies she has conducted herself on the topic of sexualization, she talks about how the amount of sexualization in advertising affects how society views the culture and products consumers buy. She also notes that because of the quantity and prevalence of these ads, the rate of all forms of sexual assault, specifically rape (mostly towards women of all age), increase, as well as other forms of assault. It is important to examine Kilbourne’s use of rhetorical devices, such as ethos, pathos, and logos, and how effective these devices make her article. This way, it can be examined for its validity and her understanding of her own research. Kilbourne’s article is very effective through her uses of pathos and ethos, but at the same time, it loses its effectiveness through her absence of a counter-argument, as well as a lack

Mass media plays a great part in our lives. Television, newspapers, magazines surround us everywhere every day of our lives. All of them are stuck with different kinds of ads. But how often do we pay attention to the real sense of those ads and the ways the advertisers try to sell various products to us? We see dissoluteness and challenging behavior every day in life and we got so used to it in, at first sight, such small pieces of film, and apparently of our day routine, as advertisement, that we hardly notice the big picture. For over twenty years, Jean Kilbourne has been writing, lecturing, and making films about how advertising affects women and girls. In her essay, "‘The Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt':

In the age of feminism, women and girls realize they are not receiving equal treatment when compared to males. Women of society realize that being a woman does not mean you are weaker or inferior to males. On the contrary, women are typically intellectual and are perfectly capable of being leaders, just like their male counterparts. One advertiser took a stance on the subject of how society treats girls about being the gender they are by coining: “Like a Girl”. Judy John, the mastermind for the commercial, “#Like a Girl”, for Always (Kauffman, 2015) sends a more substantial message to the public. The commercial starts with women saying how “like a girl” is derogatory. It ends with little girls displaying how, when told how to “run like a girl” is running as fast as you can, and to “throw like a girl” is to throw with all of your strength (Kauffman, 2015). Judy John was not afraid to talk about a controversial topic. As a feminist myself, it warmed my heart to see a message expanding to a wider audience to start talk about how girls are treated in society. Judy John is known internationally for the awards she has won as the CEO of Leo Burnett, Toronto (Judy, 2015). Judy’s thought provoking advertisements are due to her creativity, career path,