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Impact of negative portrayal of women in the media
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Killing Us Softly IV is a film that discusses the effects of how women are portrayed through advertisement. Jean Kilbourne, looks deeper into the relationship between the women in advertisement and our society’s acceptance of sexual harassment and assault of women. The video also discusses the social and economic consequences of the media’s depictions of women today. The relationship between the video and society’s acceptance of harassment and assault are linked by looking at women as an object rather than a human. The video explains how women are dehumanized by the advertisements today. The video claims how people “tune out” the ads, however, viewers receive the message quick and subconscious. Also over time these subconscious messages build
Kilbourne includes various advertisements where the woman is the victim and target. The advertisements and media depicted women being overly sexualized, they promoted or glorified date rape, sex is the most important aspect of a relationship, fetishizes various products, and made men believe these were the correct ways to view or treat women. The audience these advertisements are appealing to are men because media depicts women as always being the victims. Men are lead to believe that they should buy certain products as portrayed in media or advertisements because they will get the attention from the ladies. “The violence, the abuse, is partly the chilling but logical result of the objectification” (Kilbourne 498). When women are so used to seeing themselves as objectified they soon start to believe it. Women become more vulnerable because it shows men that anything is possible with just a spritz of perfume or a certain brand of an alcoholic drink. Industries do not think twice before making an advertisement because they are not the victims. Violence is the main problem that arises due to advertisements. “Women are always available as the targets of aggression and violence, women are inferior to men and thus deserve to be dominated, and women exist to fulfill the needs of men” (Kilbourne 509). As long as industries make money, nothing is off limits to put on advertisements even if it is making someone a victim. No remorse of any sort is shown because as long as money is present nothing else matters to the
Thus, we can assume that the audience itself, the members who believe in the content of ads and its sincerity, as well as, people who agree with the portrait of the women that is being created are the only prisoners in this particular situation. “To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images” (Plato 868). On the other hand, according to the Jean Kilbourne, author of “Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt” what is not mention to the public is the fact, that many women from the very young age during the process of finding out the truth and being blinded by the “light” are fighting with depression, low self-esteem, eating disorders and sexual harassment. “I contend that all girls growing up in this culture are sexually abused – abused by the pornographic images of female sexuality that surround them from birth, abused by all the violence against woman and girls, and abused by the constant harassment and threat of violence” (Kilbourne
Violence is everywhere in the United States of America. Many people in America and around the world have been a victim or know someone who has been a victim of violence. Over 22 million women in the United States have been raped in their lifetime according to the website, Victims of Crime. This number is significant. Advertisements could play a role in making violence more acceptable in our society. PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is known for having shocking advertisements. This pro-vegan and pro-vegetarian nonprofit organization has always been a topic of interest. Many of PETA’s ad campaigns are related to sexuality, violence, discrimination against how people look, and dominance over women. There are many pro-vegetarian and pro-vegan ads that do not degrade women and still are persuasive. Jean Kilbourne writes about violence and the degradation of women in advertisements. Kilbourne explains her point of view in her piece, ‘“Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt’: Advertising and Violence.” Considering Kilbourne’s argument, PETA ads are a concern because of the suggested violence while other pro-vegan and vegetarian ads are not.
Kilbourne, Jean. “‘Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt’: Advertising and Violence.” From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A Text and Reader. 2nd ed. Eds. Stuart Green and April Lidinsky. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2012. 459-480. Print.
The Ugly Truth, a film which was released in 2009, displays many particular stereotypes and gender issues which we find within American society. Gender is made up of socially constructed ideas which are reinforced by society in regards to what it means to be masculine or feminine. We first learn gender from our parents; however they too had to first learn it from their families and society. Within the American society, the media takes on a large role in creating gender norms. The media is made up of films, magazines, television programs, and news papers. The Ugly Truth, although a funny film, perpetuates these stereotypes and ideas of gender provided by our society.
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...
In 2015, “Always”, a Proctor and Gamble product, aired a commercial entitled, “Like a Girl” during a Superbowl commercial break. Since the Superbowl has such a large audience, the overall message from the commercial was exposed to millions of men and women, which is a seamless promotion for the positive feminist message and even the product itself. This award-winning commercial hit home for women, especially, all across America; it exposes one stereotype “women are weak” that is still embedded in society. The “Like a Girl” commercial uses Logos, Ethos and Pathos to destroy the idea that when performing an act, “like a girl” you are doing it wrong, in a weak manner or even in an embarrassing, humiliating way.
In a brilliant update of the Killing Us Softly series, Jean Kilbourne explains the dangers of advertisements and how they objectify women. Advertisements intelligently portray women in a sexual and distorted way in order to attract the consumers’ attention. Media sets a standard on how young women view themselves and puts them at risk for developing an eating disorder. Kilbourne’s research has led her to educate those who have fallen victim to achieving the “ideal beauty” that has evolved in today’s society.
Jean Kilbourne’s “Two Way a Woman Can Get Hurt: Advertising and Violence” is a section of a book titled: “Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising” that was originally published in 1999. It is about the images of women that advertisements illustrate. The central claim or thesis of the document is that: “advertising helps to create a climate in which certain attitudes and values flourish and it plays a role in shaping people’s ideas” (paraphrase). The author wants people by all genders and young children to acknowledge a right attitude towards what is shown in the advertisements so that the standards of behavior will not be influenced. As a result, it enables the negative contribution from the advertisements to be limited or eliminated.
Instead, women are being discriminated and treated as inferior due to the stereotypes that are portrayed in the media. The media creates and reproduces ways of seeing that at a minimum reflect and shape our culture. We can look at the media to understand more about a culture’s values and norms, if we realize the limitations of looking at the media. For example, one may ask, does the news based in the United Sates represent what the American culture is like, or only what stands out from everyday American culture? The answer to that is no. Instead, the media represents what it thinks it will be able to sell and is supported by advertisements. This includes violent acts, the sensationally and inappropriate. Jhally reminds us that “it is this male, heterosexual, pornographic imagination based on the degradation and control of women that has colonized commercial culture in general, although it is more clearly articulated in music videos” (Jhally 2007). Therefore, “media content is a symbolic rather than a literal representation of society and that to be represented in the media is in itself a form of power—social groups that are powerless can be relatively easily ignored, allowing the media to focus on the social groups that ‘really matter’” (Gerbner,
The documentary Miss Representation identifies the numerous ways women are misrepresented in the media, including in news, advertisements, movies, and television. The title Miss Representation emphasizes that the way we portray women in the media is a misrepresentation, as in it does not do women justice and oftentimes, has a negative impact on the perception of women. Frequently in the media, women lack leading roles and complexity, are held to an unrealistic standard of beauty, and are subject to objectification and beautification (Newsom, 2011). These misrepresentations lay the groundwork for gender socialization, and therefore, shape how women perceive themselves and are perceived by others.
Everyone has been judged or has judged others based on their appearances or actions before. People tend to base these judgments on male or female characteristics, labeling each person as they pass by. Many think that these characteristics have been long defined to match genders, and are not the cause of society’s influence. In Jean Kilbourne’s article, “’Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt’: Advertising and Violence,” and Michael Kimmel’s “’Bros Before Hos’: The Guy Code,” both authors effectively assess society’s influence on these specific gender roles and characteristics that each sex is to exhibit, using various rhetorical strategies.
Gender stereotypes and biasses exist in media. In most situations, women are associated with more negative stereotypes and their portrayals can “undermine their presence by being “hyper-attractive” or “hyper-sexual” and/or passive” (Smith, 2008). In The Wolf of Wall Street women are objectified. They are treated
4) Kilbourne, Jean. Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising’s Image of Women. Dir. Sut Jhally. DVD. Media Education Foundation, 2000.
With so much exposure to this type of media, it is easy to become desensitised to it. With America becoming numb to the violence in these advertising tactics, domestic violence is an increasing problem as brutality against women has become trivialized. Jean Kilbourne 's “‘Two Ways a Woman can get Hurt”: Advertising and Violence’ argues that violence in advertising profoundly affects people in a skewed physiological manner, leading to violence against women. Kilbourne insists that “...violent images contributes to the state of terror...” felt by women who feel victimized by men who “...objectify and are disconnected...” from the women they mistreat (431). She furthers her argument by dictating that “....turning a human being into…an object, is almost always the first step towards justifying violence against that person” (431). So much of the media that America consumes is centered on dehumanizing women into an object of male enjoyment. It is difficult to have empathy toward a material object. Because of this objectification, men feel less guilty when enacting brutality upon women. Violence becomes downplayed because it is seen everywhere - in advertising and media - and this has contributed significantly to the cases of domestic violence in America. America has become numb to violence against women in advertising, leading to an alarming increasing domestic violence in this