Jean Kilbourne

Advertising Essay
The technology of today has allowed for advertising to reach every corner of our lives. Commercials show on the television, pop-ups and sidebars are on your favorite website, and in the games you play on your phone. Noël Sturgeon and Jean Kilbourne both look at the effects that advertisers use, with Sturgeon it is nature used in ads, and Kilbourne focuses on women.
In her essay, called The Politics of the Natural in U.S. History and Popular Culture, Noël Sturgeon looks at the effects that nature has had in our society. In Sturgeon’s essay, her argument is that nature plays an important part today, especially on how we base our arguments. These arguments can be seen in advertisements used to entice consumers to purchase a product, hoping to grasp onto the compelling draw of anything connected to nature in our mindsets. Nature can also

be used to justify and reinforce prejudices or inequalities still present in society, such as gender roles, the purity of a white woman, or those from history, like the ‘huMAN’ rights as Sturgeon mentions in using nature as a tool. Sturgeon’s argument is formed throughout this essay, each section another part of her argument, with evidence, and ends with a strong conclusion that ties the argument together.
To support her argument, Sturgeon uses personal experience, citations, and advertisements as evidence. Sturgeon’s use of personal experiences in the classroom is balanced by her usage of many sources and the advertisements inserted through the essay. Before discussing advertising, she uses her sources as examples for what point she is making. Sturgeon first makes her point, and then shows a source that fit with her claim as evidence. When her argument comes to advertising nature, she inserts the advertisements as evidence to show the audience the ad not only with her words and descriptions but visually.
In Sturgeon’s essay, the section about nature in the U.S. popular culture, through the advertising nature section is probably the strongest part of the essay. In these sections, Sturgeon mixes her experiences and cited material as evidence. She brings in what she has learned from her students from teaching, adding their ideas into the possible definitions of nature and what it means, along with their reactions to other definitions. This gives strength to her writing because there are different views seen and that it not only comes from individuals from within the field or related fields but the views of those who are looking into the subject from the outside, not as experts. The analysis of the advertisements also gives this section strength. The visual given of the advertisements also help, but the main support comes from how she guides the reader into seeing how the advertisements relate to her argument and what exact parts cause the relation.
Sturgeon’s writing during the introduction her writing is not weak so much as it is primarily rhetorical questions that seem odd before the reader can understand how it works in the whole of the essay. These questions can overwhelm the readers. This beginning is dry, and may be difficult to get through. This beginning does set up her argument well but does not necessarily draw readers into reading further.
In Two Ways a Woman can get Hurt, Jean Kilbourne writes about advertisements, their depictions of violence and the effect of women and men. In the Kilbourne reading, her argument comes toward the end of her essay. She discusses the strong correlation between abuse and disturbances in relationships that have happened in a woman’s life and then her struggle with addictions, and mental health. Another part of Kilbourne’s argument is that while the media, or specifically advertisements, do not cause violence against women it can reinforce ideas that can harm women, like view of women as objects, and allow such ideas to show. The allowance of these attitudes and values can harmfully affect women, even those who are not abused, and can become embedded into the psyche of girls and women throughout life.
Kilbourne has filled her essay with images of advertisements, most of which she directly describes and uses in the essay.

Kilbourne also makes her claim first, using the advertisements to continuously build her point. The ads are described in one or two sentences, and then she dissects and analyzes the image, of how it supports her claim, like on page 496 of the girl in the elevator. Kilbourne points out the location in the image, how the girl is standing, and dressed, along with the words featured with her on the ad.
The section of Kilbourne’s essay where she discusses the effects of contempt against women and girls on women and girls was the strongest. She writes about how girls can easily write about being boys, but how boys could not do the same, CITATION/QUOTE. The examples given with the teasing and harassment seen at schools hit strongly because it makes you wonder what other examples of this you have seen and have brushed off as ‘harmless’ and ‘teasing’ because it was not happening to you, or because you have become so accustomed to the general social harassment of women it has become the norm in your

mind.
Occasionally, Kilbourne’s analysis of some of the advertisements seemed to be reaching for the evidence. With the advertisement of the little girl in the cherry patterned dress, used in discussing the sexualization of children on page 502, does not fit. The girl does not seem posed in a sexual manner, and while the cherries on her dress could be spun as sexual innuendo, they are not presented in a way to make that the most reasonable meaning behind them. Kilbourne could’ve found a more obvious advertisement to use as evidence, than a stretch to make the connection of her point to this advertisement.
Another instance is with the Chanel ad, on 497, which is not directly mentioned but included with pictures in which Kilbourne is using as evidence for the violence shown towards women. This ad does not appear to be a man hitting a shadow figure of a woman, but of a man. Kilbourne could have used the advertisement later in the essay, during the subject of the upcoming popularity of objectifying men, and enforcing stereotypical masculine traits, like aggression, as the man in the advertisement is making himself manlier, because he is aggressive and has ‘beaten’ out the weaker part of himself. The use of these advertisements does not necessarily weaken her points she is trying to make with them as evidence, just that more suitable advertisements could have found to support her arguments.
In advertising not only women and nature are used in order to tempt viewers to purchase their product. What advertisers put into their advertisements depend greatly on what will catch and hold the attention of viewers and leave an impression. It can be shocking, and abnormal to do this, or it can be simply psychology, like when advertising food uses lots of red to make people hungry, all trying to make people desire specific products. However, as Kilbourne and Sturgeon have discussed in their essays, these advertisements, with the ideas and attitudes they can reinforce, can significantly affect people, and have lasting effects in the psyche of those people.