Kilbourne Killing Us Hardy 4 Analysis

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 lower women’s self-esteem. 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 put out by companies

In Jean Kilbourne’s essay, “Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt: Advertising and Violence” she goes into how advertisements sexualize women and how that can relate to violence such as sexual assault. Kilbourne starts out by telling us what we already know. Advertisements sexualize women and these advertisements have an effect on our society. When looking through the sexually charged advertisements Kilbourne had included in her essay, I was not surprised by any of them. I’m exposed to nudity and the sexualization of women every day.

Many people would argue that they personally feel exempt from the influences of advertising. But if this is the case, then why is the advertising industry grossing over $250 billion a year? The American living in the United States is typically exposed to over 3,00 advertisements in a single day, which means that he or she will spend two years of their lives watching television commercials. Advertisements are everywhere and we cannot avoid them. We see advertisements in schools, buildings, billboards, airplanes, bust stops, and so on. Not only are advertisements selling advertisements, but they’re selling values and beliefs, sexuality, images, and the normalcy of believing who we should be because an advertisement said so. Advertisements can create environments, but sometimes these environments can become toxic when consumers buy into its toxicity. One of the biggest toxicities of advertisements is the portrayal of women in advertisements. Though standards of beauty vary over time and by cultures, it seems as though the advertising industry is still buying into “the beauty myth.” This is notion that “the quality of beauty objectively and universally exists.” Though there have been strides to break this notion and attack how advertising has objectified women, it seems as though advertisements are objectifying women more and more. In most advertisements, we are not seeing women being depicted as who they really are, but being portrayed and objectified to be someone that they

In the video “Killing Us Softly”, Jean Kilbourne explains how ads portray women in our world. Women are portrayed as fragile, more vulnerable, and less powerful. Ads are photoshopped to make their bodies the “ideal image” of what women should look like. Ads promote sexual and unhealthy images of women. The pictures are photoshopped making the models body shape and skin color completely different to what her actual body looks like. It changes her face to look more appealing, body shape thinner, white or light skinned, and bigger breasts. Ads also create a climate for violence against women. Ads portray men as strong, big, and more powerful. Men don’t live in a world where their bodies are criticized and judged every day. Men are less likely

Whether we realize it or not, we are constantly surrounded by advertisements. On average, we are exposed to approximately 3,000 ads per day, through logos, billboards, and television commercials, even our choices of brands. But in today’s society, one of the most used and influential tools of advertising are women. But the unfortunate thing is that women are not just viewed as actresses in these ads but as objects for people to look at, use, abuse, and more. In her fourth installment in a line of documentaries, “Killing Us Softly 4,” Jean Kilbourne explains the influence of advertising women and popular culture, and its relationship to gender violence, sexism and racism, and eating disorders.

In “Two Ways a Woman Can get Hurt: Advertising and Violence,” the author Jean Kilbourne describes how advertising and violence is a big problem for women. Although her piece is a little scrambled, she tries to organize it with different types of advertisement. Women are seen as sex objects when it comes to advertising name brand products. Corporate representatives justify selling and marketing for a product by how a woman looks. Kilbourne explains how the media is a big influence on how men perceive women. Kilbourne tries to prove her point by bashing on advertising agencies and their motives to successfully sell a product. Kilbourne’s affirmation towards advertisements leaves you no doubt that she is against them.

In society today, men are seen as superior to women. Men are placed on a pedestal as if they are more important. Advertisements tend to make this situation worse. The advertisements are shown everyday degrade women and make it seem as if they have to look a certain way in order to be perfect. Women are portrayed as less important in the media due to body shaming, constant comparison to societal standards, and being hypersexualized.

Next I am going to talk about advertising focused on gender roles as a form of negative media. For women, the media is always focused on how they look. It constantly degrades women’s self esteem by telling them to be skinny, vulnerable, powerless, and silenced. In addition, the media turns women into objects or things instead of beings, which encourages violence towards them. This teaches women it is okay for people to use them. Men are also negatively impacted by the media as they are scrutinized for having feminine qualities such as compassion, nurturance, cooperation, empathy, sensitivity, and good communication skills. Men are told they must be violent, brutal, and ruthless, especially towards women. The media’s perspective on what it means

Everyday we expose ourselves to thousands of advertisements in a wide variety of environments where ever we go; yet, we fail to realize the influence of the implications being sold to us on these advertisements, particularly about women. Advertisements don’t just sell products; they sell this notion that women are less of humans and more of objects, particularly in the sexual sense. It is important to understand that the advertising worlds’ constant sexual objectification of women has led to a change in sexual pathology in our society, by creating a culture that strives to be the unobtainable image of beauty we see on the cover of magazines. Even more specifically it is important to study the multiple influences that advertisements have

Advertisers have countless subtle ways of presenting advertisements to sell products, but a lot of these advertisements may go way beyond the selling of products. Advertisements with regard to violent sexual scenes against women may actually be sending subliminal messages that violence is okay. Looking at these advertisements, it is not hard to see that there is a deeper meaning behind them than to just sell a product. With Sexual and violent Advertisements we may even be able to make the statement that rape, sexual assault and violence is alive and thriving in our society. Americans along with Europeans are being desensitized by the vast amount of violent advertisements. Advertisements that convey startling portrayals of women being

Sexist ads show that society is dominated by the same masculine values that have controlled the image of women in the media for years. Sexist advertisement reinforces gender stereotypes and roles, or uses sex appeal to sell products, which degrades the overall public perception of women. The idea that sexism is such a rampant problem comes from the stereotypes that are so deeply embedded into today’s society that they almost seem to be socially acceptable, although they are nowhere near politically correct. Images that objectify women seem to be almost a staple in media and advertising: attractive women are plastered all over ads. The images perpetuate an image of the modern woman, a gender stereotype that is reinforced time and time again by the media. These images are accepted as “okay” in advertising, to depict a particular product as sexy or attractive. And if the product is sexy, so shall be the consumer. In the 1970s, groups of women initially took issue with the objectification of women in advertisements and with the limited roles in which these ads showed women. If they weren’t pin-ups, they were delicate

Atomic bombs, guns, bullets, what else does Harold Edgerton photograph? Harold Edgerton had a different style from other photographers. He didn’t do the usual portrait or landscape. He would go to extreme lengths for one shot. Harold Edgerton was a photographer who took many photos that many other people wouldn't. He captured on film an atomic bomb that blew up milliseconds after the explosion. The picture was taken many miles away with a ten foot lens. He has taken many photos where he has shot a bullet through a card or an apple and other different fruits. He took more amazing unique photos. Edgerton is a famous photographer, inventor, and a great teacher.

Today's media is increasingly pornographic, and the notion that 'sex sells' has infiltrated the advertising of virtually all products and services. Both men and women are sexualized in contemporary media, but the extent to which women are sexualized is far greater that men are. Jean Kilbourne states in her talk, The Dangerous Ways Ads See Women, "There are stereotypes that harm men, of course, but they tend to be less personal, less related to the body." The stereotypes that drive the portrayal of women in the media lead to the repeated objectification, particularly sexual objectification,

For example Dolce & Gabbana's advertisement is not promoting the product, it is giving he viewers a sexual sense to gain customers. The advertisement portrays attractive men who are half naked. One of the man is in a sexual position with the women who is showing a lot of skin. The other men are surrounding the couple like bodyguards. This represents that the women have no control over protecting themselves, therefore they presenting themselves vulnerable which makes them “easy to get”. These kinds of advertisement trivialize rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. It empowers men to be dominate and controlling over women, not allowing them to have high aspiration. In addition, I can relate this to another magazine advertizement in which the fashion editorial reveals a man standing on top of a women who has a rug shaped coat on. This shows the male is considered as the

commercials provide a clear example; They use a female with bikinis or even with just a cover up on, the purpose is to sell the restaurant food but they make a focus on the model than the actual product; the takeaway remains to be that these ads are more harmful to the population then good. In some ads they make light use of rape, domestic violence, reduce women to a pair of breasts, and even throw in a nude woman (Sexualizing Women in Ads). These study suggest and prove that the use of exploiting women in these manners lead to younger women, and even teens/tweens, to place value in themselves due to physical appearance; thus leading to body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, self- esteem and