The Documentary Killing Us Softly Exposed

The media pressures women to conform to the rail-thin models they display on their ads, and are

According to Sociologist Craig Calhoun, socialization is “the process through which individuals internalize the values, beliefs, and norms of a society and learn to function as its members”(Calhoun, 2013). With that in mind, media, particularly the music video and advertisement industry, are essential parts of contemporary socialization, especially involving the perpetuation of gender roles in our culture. At a very young age, children learn, without difficulty, the differences between boys and girls, and what standards they are held to. Women are often objectified, systematically demoralized, and dehumanized in the music video industry and mainstream advertisement. External forces, such as the media, not only guide children to understand the norms of each gender, but these forces also shape children and adolescent’s perception of the self. The documentaries Killing Us Softly 4 directed by Jean Kilbourne and Dream World 3 directed by Sut Jhally explore the distorted and fallacious ideals of femininity and sexuality expressed in contemporary media.

Why is the model industry, creating this idea that all females have to look like this ‘doll’ to be beautiful? Society has moulded the ‘ideal’ body image to an unattainable goal fashioned by the criteria established through advertising. Advertisements are enforcing the standards of beauty to encourage our youth to believe and aspire to become this contemporary based view of what beautiful is.

Everyone cares about how he or she look and wants to have a good figure. Today, a good appearance can even leave a good impression to other people. However, nobody is perfect. I think nobody has a perfect face and retain flawless forever. The perfect women in advertisements and magazines have good make up that make them look flawless and slim. Some pictures were photoshoped to show the audience how good their products work. Like Jean Kilbourne (2010) said in the video Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising’s image of women that the supermodel Cindy Crawford once said I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford. Thus, even the supermodels and actress do not believe in their pictures and advertisements. They know they are not as perfect as what is depicting in the advertisement. They also pursue the ideal beauty and wish to

Have you ever thought of what true beauty means? In the article “Pop Culture Is Destroying True Beauty” by Rachel Drevno, she explains how pop culture and the media are influencing people to believe that they aren’t good enough because they don’t look a certain way. The beauty Drevno discusses are the actors and celebrities in commercials, movies, and magazines. She believes that people are trying and changing themselves to look like those in commercials or movies because that’s how standard beauty has been portrayed. I strongly agree with her argument because the media only presents images of attractive, beautiful, and sexy figures.

For a long time, the media and especially advertisers have promoted the idea of a ’perfect woman’ with the flawless features and feminine traits, a woman who obeys and serves man. Over time, the perfect woman has evolved as a person who does it all in the manner that she works on par with men, has a family, earns equal to that of the male counterpart and still look flawless. The common factor in the above perceptions is the flawless and perfect looking woman. But in today’s

They get compared to what the ‘perfect body’ or ‘perfect women’ is. Though realistically, there is no such thing as the ‘perfect body’ or ‘perfect women’. Yet these women either compare themselves or get compared constantly to what society believes is perfect, flawless, and beautiful. In her book “Privilege Through the Looking-Glass”, author Patricia Levy stated: “The sexual objectification of women and cultural messages about appearance encourages us to focus on our appearance above all else, believing that only when we fit the cultural standard of tall, leggy, skinny, large-breasted, and beautiful will we be successful, desirable, and happy.” (119).

Also, the media lowers women's self-esteem by making them believe that if they don't have the appearance of the young woman in the advertisement, their body is not classified as beautiful. Diana Vancura in her article, “The Media Focus Too Much on Looks” not only emphasizes the idea that the media ignores women's talents, but also the idea that they only “advertise a specific body type as beautiful” constantly. Once again we see how media puts down any beauty that

“The average fashion model is over six feet tall and weighs well under 120 pounds.[ In actuality] the average American woman is five feet four inches and weighs 140 pounds and that less than 5 percent of all women have the body type they see in magazines” (Persson, 2012). The fact that women compare themselves to a standard of beauty that only 5% of all women actually have is quite shocking. The representation of women in the media has been set to such unreasonable levels that women feel they aren't beautiful if they don't meet those standards. When did beauty become defined by numbers on a scale? By today's standards, beauty is described by a person's physical appeal. The media's role in the representation

Today, women still feel pressured to be thin but also curvaceous. Celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Lopez and the OG Marilyn Monroe are women that are idealized for their thin, hourglass figure. Women who don’t naturally have this figure are now achieving this look in other ways that can manipulate their bodies. In order to achieve a curvy, hourglass figure, women have turned to plastic surgery, diets, and waist trainers. Ladies are so constrained to resemble the perfect lady that they will do whatever it takes to accomplish a trendy look, yet have they gone too far? Brooke Erin Duffy, an

Advertisements set the standard of beauty because an audience perceives what is being distributed as an “ideal woman.” If she was not the “ideal woman” then why is she on the cover of all the magazines? In Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences, David R. Croteau and William D. Hoynes write, “The most visible ad is the cover of the magazine. The standard image of the ideal woman on the cover suggests that purchase of the magazine will provide clues to how and what to buy in order to become the ideal woman.” This woman on this magazine, they claim, is simply being used as a form of covert advertising to sell products (182). The mindset is that if a woman purchases all of the products as the one on the cover then she will then be the “ideal” woman and will be in a comfortable position in that aspect of her life. She will not have to worry further of beauty. However, that is unrealistic as humans cannot reach perfection and even if they were exactly similar to the ideal woman the media would simply move on to the next interpretation of

Samantha Levine was in shock when she heard about young girls wearing body shaping undergarments, like waist-trainers, and getting surgical procedures to improve their looks. Feminism is compromised when girls care more about what their waist looks like in jeans instead of getting a promotion at work.Something is always advertising weight loss: TV ads, weight loss ads, shakes, and diet pills. Everywhere girls look, there are models in the advertisements that are too thin and probably retouched. Celebrities on social media use photoshop and other apps to make them look

In this article, written by Kelli Christine Porter, explains modern beauty and what it really is. Every woman is expected to look a specific way and if they do not they are considered ugly. This article goes to the extreme as to what woman should look like. According to the article, the perfect woman should be “radiant, glowing skin, shiny, voluminous hair and lean slender bodies.” This image of women is created by the media. It makes women believe that they are fat when they are of normal weight. The article uses another hyperbole by calling humans a “race of perfection.” After stating these unrealistic ideas about women, the author goes into vast detail about how humans are not perfect and women are not plastic models. Porter uses the hyperbole

Every single day when I wake up in the morning, one of the first things I do is look at myself in the mirror. Am I skinny enough? Is my skin clear enough? Do I look like the girl from the magazine I was reading yesterday? No. I don’t. But I’ll keep asking these questions each and everyday because that is what the media tells me I need to look like. Because if my waist isn’t small enough I’m not pretty. Because if I have cellulite on my legs there’s something wrong with me. Because if I don’t slot into this unattainable standard. I'm not beautiful. Airbrushing and photoshopping models in pictures to display through media is something that frankly speaking is appalling. We are alienating beautiful human beings because of the media’s dictations on what we should look like. I am sick of being brainwashed to the point where all I can ever seem to do is single out the ‘flaws’ in myself. If we display, real, beautiful, raw pictures of people in media then so many problems caused by this would no longer exist.

We are constantly surrounded by images of the “perfect” woman. She is tall, thin and beautiful. She rarely looks older than 25, has a flawless body, and her hair and clothes are always perfect. She is not human. She is often shown in pieces – a stomach, a pair of legs, a beautifully made up eye or mouth. Our culture judges women, and women judge themselves, against this standard. It is forgotten that “beauty pornography”, as Wolf says, focuses on underweight models that are usually 15 to 20 years old. Flaws, wrinkles and other problems are airbrushed out of the picture.