Argumentative Essay On Women And Violence

In an advertisement published in Vogue Paris in February 2009, Steven Klein photographs fashion model Lara Stone in a manner that brought much controversy to the world about women and violence. In the photograph, a fashionably clad woman in lingerie is forcibly held down by a naked man, while a police officer poses suggestively on her legs and points a gun in her face. This advertisement seems excessively violent for a fashion magazine that young girls and the majority of the mainstream world idolize. By condoning and making the type of violence that is popular in fashion magazines ‘cool’, people begin to recreate the scenes in these photographs in real life because they are constantly exposed to it. Furthermore, this constant exposure to violence

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