Jean Kilbourne’s 2010 documentary, Killing Us Softly 4, discusses the idea that the businesses of advertising and commercialism have promoted specific body ideals for women in our modern day society by the methods in which they market towards their target audiences, specifically how women are portrayed in their ads. Throughout the documentary, Kilbourne is extremely critical of the advertising industry, accusing it of misconduct. She argues that objectification and superficial, unreal portrayal of women in these advertisements consequently lower women’s self-esteem. Ordinarily, women have many industries that try to gear their products towards them with apparel, beauty, and toiletries being amongst the most prominent. The majority of advertisements …show more content…
This is not only damaging towards women, but it also affects the mindset of men, who are then told that the sexual assault and abuse of women is acceptable, because women take pleasure in it as well. This is not the case, and marginalizes women because ads have played a role in the formation of the normalization of rape culture in modern day society. Another important statement that Kilbourne makes is that ads sell more than products, that they sell values, images, concepts of love, sexuality, success, and normalcy. She says that ads tell people who they are and who they should be. Through the propagation of the idea that women are willing to be sexually assaulted, ads marginalize women by telling them that the willingness to be submissive and sexually assaulted is a positive mindset. In this way, ads are Photoshop and hours of retouching and makeup, advertising has literally created a body type of a thin, in shape woman with considerable sized breasts, a small waist, long legs, with no wrinkles or blemishes, considered impossible to achieve in a healthy way, which inadvertently can lead this to women. This causes the women viewing these ads to feel marginalized and ashamed of their own bodies, which can also lead to women developing eating disorders and resorting to other unhealthy methods to achieve this body type. These ads also tell men from an …show more content…
This is not only damaging towards women, but it also affects the mindset of men, who are then told that the sexual assault and abuse of women is acceptable, because women take pleasure in it as well. This is not the case, and marginalizes women because ads have played a role in the formation of the normalization of rape culture in modern day society. Another important statement that Kilbourne makes is that ads sell more than products, that they sell values, images, concepts of love, sexuality, success, and normalcy. She says that ads tell people who they are and who they should be. Through the propagation of the idea that women are willing to be sexually assaulted, ads marginalize women by telling them that the willingness to be submissive and sexually assaulted is a positive mindset. In this way, ads are rios. This is a point that Kilbourne holds throughout the course of the
According to Jeanne Kilbourne essay, Kilbourne talks about women being abused by men in visual advertisements and the consequences of those representations. I for one, argue with Kilbourne that women are being too exposed and hurt when they are in advertisements. So using Kilbourne 's analytical perspective and my own perspective we can give our insights on why we feel women are being treated badly and unequally from men with the following pictures. From the past till today women in advertisement pictures have been mostly victimized by men, and Kilbourne and I feel this sort of action needs to come to an end.
Jhally, S., In Kilbourne, J., Rabinovitz, D., & Media Education Foundation. (2010). Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising's Image of Women.
In her essay, she describes the effects that sexualized advertising has on the psyche of the viewer and what it implies for the society that accepts it. Kilbourne asserts that by creating such advertisements, it is both encouraging and allowing one to downplay the effects that sex has. She claims, “sex in advertising
The documentary Killing Us Softly 4 discusses and examines the role of women in advertisements and the effects of the ads throughout history. The film begins by inspecting a variety of old ads. The speaker, Jean Kilbourne, then discusses and dissects each ad describing the messages of the advertisements and the subliminal meanings they evoke. The commercials from the past and now differ in some respects but they still suggest the same messages. These messages include but are not limited to the following: women are sexual objects, physical appearance is everything, and women are naturally inferior then men. Kilbourne discusses that because individuals are surrounded by media and advertisements everywhere they go, that these messages become real attitudes and mindsets in men and women. Women believe they must achieve a level of beauty similar to models they see in magazines and television commercials. On the other hand, men expect real women to have the same characteristics and look as beautiful as the women pictured in ads. However, even though women may diet and exercise, the reality...
Advertisements are everywhere, combining images and words together to create a message to sell a product. The initial impression is that the advertisers are just trying to sell their products, but there often seems to be an underlying message. It is often heard that “sex sells.” So, many advertisers will use beautiful women and men in their advertisements to try to market a product. The hope is that “sex will sell,” and people will go out and buy what the ads are selling. There are many advertisements and commercials that use this approach. Prime examples of this are the advertisements for Orbit Gum and A Diamond is Forever. Also, the commercials for Levi jeans use sex to promote the sale of their brand. As a way to explain how and why the media uses “sex to sell,” many articles have been written concerning this. For instance, “Sex as Symbol in Fashion Advertising” by Arthur Asa Berger talks about the sexual undertones used in ads as a way to sell products. Similarly, Jean Kilbourne’s “Beauty…and the Beast of Advertising” discusses the portrayal of women in advertisements as sex objects. Finally, “Analyzing Signs and Sign Systems” by Arthur Asa Berger offers ways to analyze advertisements and their use of sex. No matter what the advertisement is for; although it may seem that an advertiser is only trying to sell a product, the ways the advertisements are presented often have a hidden meaning.
Advertisements are everywhere. Rosewarne reveals that “In both a workplace and a public space setting audiences are held captive to such images; and both sets of images work to masculinise space in a way that makes women feel excluded” (Rosewarne 314). Take beer advertisements as an example of this. Beer advertisements have been utilizing the female body to draw the interest of males for centuries. This materialization of women has been verified to not only have a discouraging effect on women, but an unfavorable effect on civilization. The purpose of these posters is to allure the male 's eyes to the model’s body and therefore to the beer planted in the background. These ads strive to make you subconsciously affiliate a charming woman with a bottle of beer. In theory, these posters should make a guy imagine that if he purchases a bottle of their beer, that one way or another there would be a model to go with it. This is unreasonable of course because a pretty woman does not emerge out of nowhere every time someone has a beer. In my opinion, advertisements like these portray women as sex symbols. The advertisers attempts to link their product with the female body, does not encourage women, but rather has an accidental effect of lower self esteem and confidence in women. Rosewarne summarizes the her stand on sexual harassment in public ads by
In recent times, the portrayal of women in advertising has been raised as an increasingly prevalent issue in the society with the sexual objectification on women in both print and digital advertising. According to Carr, E., & Szymanski, D. (2010), sexual objectification occurs when a woman’s body or body parts are singled out and separated from her as a person and she is viewed primarily as a physical object of male sexual desire. It is especially with instances such as advertisements by Dolce & Gabbana, where the female model is pictured as a sexual object, controlled by four other men , clearly suggesting a scene of gang rape and sexual violence(The Huffington Post UK,18 March 2015). This advertisement makes use the gang rape concept to draw
The goal of advertising is inherently to appease a certain customer base in order for those customers to be willing to consume the companies’ product, however, what this appeasement has done is create a “toxic cultural environment”(Kilbourne) in which it is “okay” to objectify and dehumanize women in order to sell a product. Yet, advertising, as a collective whole, sells women the idea that how they look is what is most important because of how they express the ideal image of female beauty. On every cover of every magazine, advertisers portray women in the most ideal, impossibly perfect way possible that tells both men and women what a woman should look like, and that in particular, they exemplify white traits such as light skin, straight hair, and thin lips. However, the “beauty” of women that we see in advertising is not achievable by a normal member of our society simply because the flawlessness we see ...
When one thinks of the decades of feminist mobility, there is a definite degree of gratitude. In the past 40 years the roles of women have changed dramatically, thanks in part to activists, lobbyists, and women everywhere. However, there is a definite need for change in the world of advertisement. As one of the largest media outlets, it connects to millions of women daily, most being young women. In being our next generation, the idea of equality in sex needs to be instilled early to counteract the stereotypes of the media. According to Jean Kilbourne in her book, Deadly Persuasion, the media has "made possible a kind of national peer pressure that erodes private and individual values and standards" (Kilbourne, 1999: 129). These new values are destroying a young woman's authentic self, in a sense she is selling herself into the media's stereotype. Women have become objectified in advertising at a very young age.
Advertising is a billion dollar market with a sole purpose to persuade the consumer to purchase some type of product or service. Companies use many different methods to convince the public to spend money on their products with most of their advertising focused around the idea of “sex sells”. This idea promotes a hunger in the consumer for gaining personal pleasure or acceptance of sexuality by the eye catching effects of publicly baring flesh. These ideas are promoted through TV commercials, billboards, magazines, radio ads, or any type of media targeted at the mass majority of people. Every where a person looks there seems to be some type of advertising based on sex. The illusion of making one feel they want, need, or cant live without something so pleasing makes a person want the product even more. This is a concept that can be explained by the idea of sexology which states, “Sexuality is not a superficial or minor part of being human; it is basic to who we are” (Seidman 4). This idea is one of the public weaknesses that the major corporations can manipulate during advertising leaving a person to wonder why and if the idea of sex really sells. The issue is women are the only ones who seem to be sexual in advertising further creating concerns focused around the idea that sex isn’t the only thing being sold.
We are exposed to 3,000 advertisements on a daily basis, which will consume two years of our lives (Kilbourne). Jean Kilbourne, in “Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising’s Image of Women,” provides evidence about how advertising’s image of women has gotten worse. Kilbourne states that these advertisements do more than just sell products they tell us who we are and who we should be. In many of these advertisements women are depicted as objects or things, causing widespread violence towards women. In this paper, we will discuss how sexualization in the media is negatively affecting advertising’s image of women.
Advertisements for various products are seen everywhere — on billboards, in magazines, on television, and countless other places. What draws the consumer into the advertisement — the actual product, the display of the sensual woman as she drinks a glass of milk, or the muscular man sporting a Ralph Lauren blanket as a loincloth? These types of advertisements display unlikely depictions of men and women to society. Today, advertisers use the influence of gender and sex to sell various products to consumers, resulting in unrealistic expectations of men and women to society.
These ads impact all people in very negative ways. Men learn that it is okay to sexualize and objectify women. Women are shown to be submissive and below men, so that is the exact way they are going to be treated.
Since the beginning of advertising, it has never been kind towards women. Sexism is embedded within American history and has still prevailed to this day. Advertisements perpetuate the same sexist narratives: the ideal woman, how women should act, and the gender role they play in society. Although the movement towards women’s rights has
The average American is exposed to hundreds of advertisements per day. Advertisements targeted toward females have an enormous effect on women's thoughts, attitudes, perceptions, and actions. Most of the time, women don't even realize these advertisements are formulating self-image issues. These ideals surround them daily and they become naturalized to the ads. Advertising creates an entire worldview persuading women to emulate the images they see all around them. In order to create a market for their products, companies constantly prey upon women's self esteem, to feel like they aren't good enough just the way they are. This makes women constantly feel stressed out about their appearance (Moore). Advertising has a negative effect on women's body image, health, and self-esteem.