Jean Kilbourne The Killing USftly Analysis

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 Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly she states that “Ads sell a great deal more than products. They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth...” In my opinion, this could statement could not be more true. It seems as though the media projects images that subconsciously tell women how to live their lives “prosperously.” In advertisements, the ultimate success in life is based solely on looks, and as Kilbourne indicates, the most desirable look for women is reached through being very thin, white, with large breasts and the perfect skin. Most importantly, with the achievement of this “ideal look,” comes the promise of success in terms of happiness, romance, and self-control.

Women aren’t objects. They aren’t tools for making money, and they aren’t just pieces of meat. Women are human beings. They shouldn’t be demeaned or made to feel they must reach a ridiculously unreachable standard. In Jean Kilbourne’s film, “Killing us Softly” she describes how she feels about this topic. All too often, advertisers treat women as objects and exploit their sexuality for profit. This objectification is clearly displayed in the ads below.

Jean Kilbourne analyzes two sides to the spectrum in which women are damaged. As the title states, these two ways reveal themselves as advertising and violence. She then dives deep into the dark world of advertising and exposes the vile nature of these productions. Kilbourne selected and criticized a large number of specific ads implying sexual behavior and aggression towards women. Looking through these ads, she then suggests how treating women in such a sexually degrading way may lead to violence and how these behaviors must be stopped. Many instances have been laid out including many female teens being emotionally abused at school and online. Women are seemly unable to escape these problems as long as men are around. In the

Ads sell much more than products. They sell moral values and cultural images, such as concepts of success, love, and sexuality. Jean Kilbourne argues that advertising is a very powerful social force that should be taken seriously. Her videos (e.g., Killing Us Softly: Advertising Images of Women; Still Killing Us Softly; and Calling the Shots: Women and and Alcohol) use print advertising as a vehicle to provide careful and cogent analyses of gender inequality. (Cortese 14)

Still Killing Us Softly Advertising 's Image of Women. Dir. Margaret Lazarus, Renner Wunderlich, Patricia Stallone, and Joseph Vitagliano. Cambridge Documentary Films, 1987. DVD.

exploit women by using their bodies as objects to sell and promote goods. A good example of

They have that perfect flawless skin, beautiful hair and a make up that is completely beautiful with unrealistic body image. This models in real life don’t have that kind of body. However more and more women are striving to achieve the look leading them to “continually compar[e] their appearance to an unattainable cultural thin ideal and coming up short”. They are the main target to this kind of psychological effects because where ever they go they are vulnerable to everything. women start to hate themselves they start to starve themselves to achieve the unrealistic criteria. It’s like their “bodies are no longer [their] comfort zone” however, instead they are like a presentation to the society that they frequently modify its structure via plastic surgery, cosmetics and weight loss in order to convince or prove the society that we are worth while. In order for women to achieve and successful the society need to notice how the media is manipulating women in to object and take

When watching Jean Kilbourne’s documentary titled, Killing Us Softly I learned a lot of hidden secrets about advertising and what it does to women. Kilbourne touches on many topics like, women's role in society, how they are used in ads, and how it affects women. She starts of her talk by

In the video, Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women, the way women are portrayed in advertising is explored in great detail. The video exposes the gender stereotypes that are depicted in advertising on a regular basis. The effects of mass advertising are also explored particularly the effect of objectification of women on young girls. Young girls and women are affected by these constant and never-ending advertisements sexualizing women and marginalizing them to a desired look, which is unrealistic for most women. These advertisements send a message to women that if they don’t look like the women that are being portrayed on TV, they are not worth much. Young women and teenagers are influenced even easier. Media pushes the message to young kids that their self worth is determined by how they look and what they wear.

Requirements of beauty are presented in almost all figures of trending media, which bombard women with images that illustrate what is scrutinized to be recognized as the perfect body. With fashion magazines, advertisements, movies, and television shows displaying young and attractive women whose body density is extremely below that of the ordinary everyday woman in reality, women begin to get self conscious and try to change themselves. When women begin to obsess over having the body of a model, dieting and exercise are not good or fast enough for the results they want. Because of their genetic body types, several of the standards for this body image are nearly impossible for most women to attain without plastic surgery of some kind. The flawless image of a female’s body that the media portrays does not actually exist; however, women starve themselves or pay for plastic surgery,

Jean Kilbourne is an activist and cultural theorist has been studying the images of women in advertisement for the past 40 years. In her lecture during the TEDx conference she discussed the ways how advertisement industry portrays women in the humiliating way. Vivid illustrations of advertising campaigns from different parts of the world and different decades help Jean Kilbourne to be more specific in her conclusions and more people can relate to them. This video can work as a helpful tool to prove that women are being constantly humiliated on media. Objectification of their bodies and selling products with the image of women who only take care of their families and homes creates negative images of modern women. Also it is important to conclude

Killing us softly is a series documentary video made by Jean Kilbourne. She is an author, speaker and filmmaker who is widely recognized for her work on the image of women in ad-vertising and her studies of alcohol and tobacco advertising. The first killing us softly is made in 1979 a 30 mins’ film and the last was 4 on 2009. There are 4 films in total all talking about the images of women in advertising in a particular gender stereotypes, the change of women’s self-image by the advertising and the objectification od women’s bodies. (wiki, n.d.)

Although we know the images of models in the media are adjusted, women continue to compare themselves to these edited pictures of beauty. It illustrates the transformation of a regular woman’s image into the image which appeared on a poster. Now, the real challenge lies not in persuading women that these pictures are fake, but helping them build a more realistic image of themselves and their bodies. The TV, media, and magazines alter the quality of beauty. Models and young people don’t look like the images in magazines, and they never will. The seek for perfection and flawlessness leads us to create these non realistic beliefs of how we should look.

Furthermore, with advertising in the media becoming so popular, it’s hard to go a day without seeing an image that objectifies a woman. Advertising companies and the media have created a new type of woman, the “ideal” woman, that simply does not exist in the real world. This woman typically has a size zero waist, is wrinkle and blemish free, with long, smooth, and curvaceous legs. She has voluminous hair, perfectly straight white teeth, and perfectly shaped breasts and butt. This ideal, yet unachievable woman is the center of many advertisements and is essentially the selling product for these companies and businesses. Women in society are told that they have to look like this idealized individual and are scrutinized if they don’t. They should aim to have her perfect body type and her face, despite what they have to do to achieve it. However, this woman isn’t real herself. This ideal woman is the result of hours of makeup, photo shopping, and photo retouching that comes along with digital advertising in the media. Typical women see these advertisements everywhere and are told they must look like