the impact of the media on body image

Kilbourne, Jeane. “Killing Us Softly 4.” Tru Tube. Tru Tube. 2010. Web. 13 May 2014.
In the video Killing Us Softly 4, Jean Kilbourne explains the effects of advertisements on women. Kilbourne shares insights she has gained throughout her career and points out the prevalence of advertisements and the ad’s emphasis on an unachievable ideal image.
In the video Killing Us Softly 4, Jean Kilbourne explains the effects of advertisements on the body images of women. She mentions that “we are exposed to 3000 ads everyday” (Kilbourne). Many years ago, Kilbourne began to notice a pattern in which all the advertisements represented what society thinks a woman should look like. Although some may feel that they are not affected by advertisements, they certainly are. Jean Kilbourne mentions that “only 8% of an ad’s message is recycled by the conscious mind. The rest is worked and reworked deep within the recesses of the brain” (qtd. In Killing Us Softly 4). Kilbourne mentioned that these images replay continually, giving the perception that a person is supposed to look this way. She also mentions that when confronted with the photos that represent the media’s view of “ideal beauty” we are sold “concepts of love and sexuality, success, and perhaps the most important, [the concept] of normalcy” (Killing Us Softly 4). Kilbourne also explained that the idea of “ideal beauty” is one of complete flawlessness which is unachievable. She believes that “ideal beauty” is unachievable because the people depicted as the “ideal beauty” do not truly look like that in real life. Their photos are constantly altered until the media is satisfied with the unachievable image. Kilbourne also states that in advertisements, women are depicted as objects. Kilbourne e...

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...of media images on women at risk for body image disturbance: Three targeted interventions correlates directly with Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll”. Similarly in “Barbie Doll”, the character encounters the media’s standard of beauty, but through her peers. The character is similar to the women in the control group. The character is similar because she and the women weren’t shown that the media’s ideal beauty was unattainable. So, when the character found she couldn’t meet the standards of the media, it caused her to have greater body-image disturbance. This body-image disturbance causes the character to “cut off her nose and her legs/ and offered them up/”(line 17-18).
This source was very difficult to follow. The source jumped around a lot. This source was not at all easy to find. On the Brightside, since I found it on the Palo Alto Databases, it was ready to cite.