Summary Of Killing USftly 4 By Jean Kilbourne

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).

The media group that retouches images skews the “normal” body image of people through many of its outlets, including models in advertising and magazines, and actors in TV and movie productions. “The average model portrayed in the media is approximately 5’11” and 120 pounds. By contrast, the average American woman is 5’4” and 140 pounds” (Holmstrom, 2004). This statistic shows how the media manipulates consumers into believing that because they are not what the average model looks like, they are not living up to a certain standard which implies that they need to look like that to be beautiful. Another research fact that shows a similar concept is that, “In the United States, 94% of female characters in television programs are thinner than the average American woman, with whom the media frequently associate happiness, desirability, and success in life” (Yamamiya et al., 2005). This association of female thinness and happiness, desirability and success makes consumers believe they must achieve this unrealistic thinness to achieve more ultimate goals and fulfillment in life. “The media also explicitly instruct how to attain thin bodies by dieting, exercising, and body-contouring surgery, encouraging female consumers to believe that they can and should be thin” (Yamamiya et al., 2005). This idealization of thinness in the media is seen so much, and is extremely harmful to women’s self confidence and is often associated with body image dissatisfaction, which can be a precursor to social anxiety, depression, eating disturbances, and poor self-esteem (Yamamiya et al.,

In the documentary “killing us softly 4”, Jean Kilbourne discusses the toxic environment that leads to the dehumanizing of females. She goes into intense details on how females have been misrepresented in advertisements over the years. She explains that in advertisements, females have been subjected to inhumane ways such as being a product of sexually expressive methods. Even though in recent years men have been subjected to the same media exploit as women, Jean Kilbourne expresses that it is not as half as bad as what women have been going through, and it is now worse than ever. Jean Kilbourne also expresses how Photoshop is the newest tool in promoting women. Using Photoshop as an advertisement tool allow authors to make women look unrealistically slim.

In the documentary, “Killing Us Softly”, Kilbourne mentioned how in all kinds of advertisements, women’s bodies are turned into “objects and things”. Jean believes the objectification of women creates a form of atmosphere in which there is a widespread of impractical expectations and violence against women. There’s always one part of the body that seems to be focus of a women on an ad, breasts is the go to ‘object’ on the body, which is an attention grabber for the

For women, advertising exemplifies the ideal female body. According to Kilbourne, young girls are taught from a very early age that they need to spend lots of time and money to achieve this “physical perfection.” But realistically this cannot be achieved. The ideal woman’s body is Caucasian, very skinny, big breasts, no flaws, and pretty much no pores. This cannot be achieved because it is physically impossible to look like this; the illusion comes from the secret world of Photoshop. No woman is beautiful enough so they leave it to technology to create perfection. The supermodel Cindy Crawford said, “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford!” She knew the realities of Photoshop and body image, and more women and girls need to become aware of this as well.

After watching the film “Killing us Softly” 4 by Jean Kilbourne I agreed with many of the topics she pointed out about advertising. One of the many ideas that stood out to me was that women of color are supposed to be silenced and are not allowed to have a voice, another topic she covered that I agreed with was that turning a human into an object is one of the first steps toward justifying violence against that person. As seen in the movie “Killing us Softly” I agree with Jean Kilbourne when she stated “Women of color in particular are supposed ‘shut up’ and be ‘barely there’” In many advertisements women of color are either not involved or sometimes they are white washed to give the appearance that they are lighter and prettier.

The female body image is highly influenced by the mass media and the media’s portrayal of women, ‘70% of college women say they feel worse about their own looks after reading women’s magazines’ (University of Massachusetts & Stanford University, 2006), the portrayal of women in the media has an unrealistic approach and brings out body dissatisfactions and this results in eating problems and disorders.

In today’s society, women are held to a higher standard of beauty than men. Women in the media shape society’s mainstream idea of beauty. Beauty standards surround us worldwide, from magazines, television, to films. The media depicts unrealistic expectations for women to look a certain way. One of the great offenders of this issue is Victoria’s Secret, because they only use models that look a particular way

Jean Kilbourne opens her discussion by explaining that she has been studying how women are perceived in ads for a time span of over forty years. Her personal interest in the subject came when she began modeling since during the 1960s, because options were very limited when it came to work. She claims that her experience in modeling was soul-destroying and sexual harassment and degrading came along with it. She says now, ads are much more advanced, explaining that a six month old baby can be seen representing a logo for a company. The main problem that she’s seen, however, is that the pressure for women to be young, thin, and beautiful is at an all time high. Kilbourne explains that the images in ads are not realistic goals for women to set for themselves, claiming that a cause for this unrealistic standard is photoshop. She says that boys also have high standards set in ads, but if the boys aren’t like the ads, there aren’t consequences like there would be to girls. For girls, we are sexually harassed and seen as sexual objects that boys are introduced to in very young ages now. She says sex has always been used in ads, but that it’s more graphic and pornographic today. A problem with this, she

Around 10-15% of all Americans suffer from an eating disorder. “More than 7 million women suffer from an eating disorder whereas only one million men suffer from an eating disorder” (Mirasol). In modern society, we are surrounded by media and images. Both men and women struggle to meet the expectations set forth in magazines, websites, and on television. The pressure to imitate the ideal body can lead many down unhealthy paths. Teens today face a lot more challenges which leads them to illnesses like Anorexia, Bulimia, and Binge eating. Although there are a lot of similarities in this disease, the differences can also affect people differently, which means different treatments are required.

There is something obviously wrong with these statistics. Women who subject themselves to these circumstances are fighting against their own body make-ups in order to fulfill the standards put out by the media. In order to change these staggering statistics in the future, we must examine what the media does to make girls and women obtain eating disorders.

Advertising sells more than a product; it sells values, images, concepts of love, romance, success, popularity, worth, and even normality. This puts a large negative impact on society because of social standards. These standards begin to force men and women to feel insecure, anxious, and hatred toward their bodies. Seven million girls and women under the age of twenty-five suffer from eating disorders and sixteen percent of high school boys also suffer from eating disorders, because of society’s ideal image of beauty (Photoshop in Advertising). In modeling, most agencies require women to be at least 5’9, size 0-6, and around 14-21 years of age (Model Requirements). Even though plus sizes start at size 14 in women’s, a runway models plus size starts at size 6. To top this off, almost every single

Traveling down the highway on any given day, drivers pass numerous billboards featuring ads of beautiful women. Others turn on the television or open a magazine to discover more ads showing scantily clothed women. These types of advertisements appear everywhere. In fact, the average woman sees about four hundred to six hundred advertisements per day (“Eating Disorders: Body Image and Advertising”). What is worse, these misleading ads show women whose bodies have been edited to portray society's perfect image of beauty. Since the spread of social media, it has become even easier to reach many generations of women. The media portrays an unrealistic beauty, which in turn has a negative effect on women.

Everyday of their lives, people are bombarded with advertisements pushing to sell them something, or broadcasting a new and upcoming television program. The average American sees as many as 300-500 advertisements per day. Some see as many as 1,200 a day. (Jean Kilbourne, Ed. D.) General media is tied with public relations, and has become a source of entertainment to the public eye. Women are usually seen as eye-candy, to attract the male heterosexual audience. Men and woman are usually portrayed in different ways, on national television, and Hollywood films. Men usually play the tough guy, macho man roles, while the women are predominately represented as white, young, glamorous, heterosexual, and less influential then men. (Campbell and Carilli, 2005) Attractive women are usually displayed in both male and female advertisements, and play a double role. Women will think that if they purchase this product, they will resemble the model advertising the product, and the men are tricked to think that if they purchase the product, that they will attract women like the ones advertising the product. This is the “sex sells” propaganda tactic. Models in the advertisements aren’t supposed to look like the “average,” ordinary people. To sell products, advertisers use computer generation tools, to erase any “flaws,” to appeal to a consumer.

Mass media has been around for decades and it has grown more rapidly as technology advances. It started with telegraphs and eventually turned into televisions, newspapers, cell phones, magazines, and the internet. The purpose of mass media is to provide news/information, education, and entertainment. With these purposes, comes the influence of all the information we are exposed to. Most might say that mass media has had a positive impact on society as it’s made communication and information easily accessible for everyone. However, what they’re not aware of is the negative influences it has brought to women’s body-image. Because of the media’s endless advertisements of what is considered “beautiful” or “perfect”, eating disorders and body