Jean Kilbourne's Beauty And The Beast Of Beauty Analysis

If a group of people were to walk around Times Square in New York City, they would see hundreds of different women and gather different opinions about them. Image is an important part of fashion, especially for females. Men have a standard that they can dress for unlike women who always say something about themselves through their clothing. It is because of the pressure to impress that women conceive a self-deprecating view. The two essays both describe the image of women; yet in “Beauty… and the Beast of Advertising,” Jean Kilbourne shares how advertisements influence the self images of women while in “Wears Jumpsuit. Sensible Shoes. Uses Husband’s Last Name,” Deborah Tannen explains the marks of women’s fashion choices. While Kilbourne

Advertisements prey on younger girls as they are extremely susceptible to buying products that they see, especially if others around them have these (Kilbourne 154). They also subconsciously convey the qualities of beauty to these adolescents. Kilbourne expands this hypothesis by including an article, New Age Journal, that speaks about the concept of a scrawny, emaciated type of beauty that elementary grade female children admired (Kilbourne 156). She also talks about how, in a study by a university professor, over 75 percent of fourth-grade girls in the California Bay Area were keeping an eye on their weight (Kilbourne 156). It is in youth that people feel beautiful, and advertisements take advantage of that. Mature women are belittled while child-like women are praised; which is why it is so hazardous for juveniles to believe they should have a provocative facade (Kilbourne 157). On the contrary, Tannen discusses the styles of all women since all women are marked. It is impossible for women to evade judgment for their marked fashion decisions. Everything about a woman is marked; from their hair choices, to their semblance, to their titles (Tannen 263). Every style of hair that a woman can think of is marked—even having no precise hair style is marked (Tannen 262). When deciding what to wear, all clothes come with a specific message to others, whether they want to feel sexy or not. The same goes for all types of makeup, or no makeup at all (Tannen 262). In terms of having a title, if a woman keeps her last name, one can assume she has accomplished something in her life to have the right to do so (Tannen 263). All these decisions that women make give a description of themselves to