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.
Advertisers use women that are abnormally thin, and even airbrush them to make them appear thinner. These advertisers promote a body image that is completely unrealistic and impossible to achieve (Dohnt & Tiggemann, 2006b). It has been instilled in these advertisers’ minds that a thinner model will sell more (Hargreaves & Tiggemann, 2003). Media has a direc...
The documentary Killing Us Softly 4 discusses and examines the role of women in advertisements and the effects of the ads throughout history. The film begins by inspecting a variety of old ads. The speaker, Jean Kilbourne, then discusses and dissects each ad describing the messages of the advertisements and the subliminal meanings they evoke. The commercials from the past and now differ in some respects but they still suggest the same messages. These messages include but are not limited to the following: women are sexual objects, physical appearance is everything, and women are naturally inferior then men. Kilbourne discusses that because individuals are surrounded by media and advertisements everywhere they go, that these messages become real attitudes and mindsets in men and women. Women believe they must achieve a level of beauty similar to models they see in magazines and television commercials. On the other hand, men expect real women to have the same characteristics and look as beautiful as the women pictured in ads. However, even though women may diet and exercise, the reality...
Body image is the perception, both thoughts, and feelings concerning an individual’s physical appearance. Research has suggested that exposure to an ideal standard of what it may mean to be beautiful is the norm for the media to expose a woman to. The results of an idea of feminine beauty can be disastrous for women, leading to depression, and an unrealistic body image. According to Posavac & Posavac in the article titled Reducing the Impact of Media Images on Women at Risk for Body Image Disturbance: Three Targeted Interventions...
Media is different forms of communication, such as radio, newspapers, and television, that are directed to mass audiences. Kilbourne’s presentation explores how media, specifically advertisements, have unrealistic and unhealthy perceptions of beauty, perfection and sexuality.
The media has had an increasingly destructive effect on young people who are becoming worryingly obsessed with their body image. The media is saturated in sexual imagery in which young people have to face every day. The sheer volume of sexual imagery in the media today has resulted in the vast majority of young people to become hooked on looking as near to perfection everyday by using the latest products and buying the latest fashions. This used to be enough but lately the next step to achieving perfection is cosmetic surgery. Everyone wants to look attractive, especially teenagers who are not only put under massive strain to succeed but to look beautiful and climb the ranks of the social ladder, and it seems that the only way to achieve the much desired beauty is to turn to drastic measures.
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 consequently lower women’s self-esteem. Ordinarily, 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
Nowadays, it is almost impossible to avoid exposure to advertisements. Since most people are exposed to the advertisements, the advertisements and the values that they sell influence the society. In Jean Kilbourne’s essay, she asserts that “[a]dvertising sells values, images, and concepts of love and sexuality, romance, success, and, perhaps most important, normalcy” (126). According to Kilbourne, the advertisers sell not only their products but also the values and one of the most popular values that the advertisers sell is beauty. In today’s society, the effects of beauty are outrageous as people’s attention to the physical appearance increases.
What is the perfect body type? Throughout our adolescence ages into the adult hood stage many of young women struggle to answer this question. Our idea of what the perfect body type is ever changing however it is always influenced by the Medias perception of what the perfect body image should look like. We all idolize these images we see on television and in magazines and some of us would do anything to look just like them. This image forces us to have self esteem issues.These advertisements are damaging both our mental and physical state of being Many young girls who take extreme measures to live up to the Medias perception of the perfect body type are more likely to develop one of the many body image disorders. The average age a girl starts to diet is eight ("Media and Eating Disorders" 1). When a girl becomes obsessed with dieting and looking better, they can easily become anorexic or bulimic. 79% of teenage girls who vomit are dedicated readers of woman's magazines ("Media and Eating Disorders" 2). The Medias standard of perfection puts stress and pressure on young girls to become skinner. Eating disorders, excessive exercise, and depression are a result of the Medias influence on their self image. The media have negatively influenced the self image of young girls by forcing their unrealistic perception of what women should look like onto them .
(Jhally, Kilbourne, Rabinovitz, 2010) The amount of money put into advertisement worldwide in 2011 was $464 billion. (Pavlik, McIntosh, 2014, p. 268). In our society, sexism has become a normal part of our everyday life based on the ads we constantly see and because of the society we live in. Women are represented in ads as objects and not as human beings. The advertising is convincing us that the most important goal for a woman should be to become “the perfect woman” and for a man to find one. Dove has a commercial called “Evolution” demonstrating the idea that “the perfect woman” does not truly exist. They show the transformation in which models go through before photo or video shoots. The makeup applied to create a flawless face and the hair extensions attached to create the ideal look are only the beginning of the issue. After the photographs are taken, we are taken through a visual process of the editing done to the images: Bigger eyes, smaller nose, bigger lips, higher cheekbones, slimmer face, bigger chest, smaller waist, smoother skin, these are only a few of the changes they make while editing these pictures. These ads create an unrealistic and unattainable idea of
The goal of an advertisement is simple: to convince an audience to think a certain way. Advertisers will use a variety of techniques to persuade the consumer to buy a product. One such technique is the “beautiful person” technique, which uses a stunning model to present a product to the audience, who believes that they too, could look beautiful if they had that particular product. This is common in media, as companies use celebrity endorsements and models all of the time. However, society’s view of “beauty” is a small, and unrealistic goal, which many people- especially women, try to achieve. The models that are considered “perfect” and “the standard of beauty” are in reality, photoshopped, tweaked and made over until they transform into the unrealistic goals plastered across almost every media platform. However, women...
The goal of advertising is inherently to appease a certain customer base in order for those customers to be willing to consume the companies’ product, however, what this appeasement has done is create a “toxic cultural environment”(Kilbourne) in which it is “okay” to objectify and dehumanize women in order to sell a product. Yet, advertising, as a collective whole, sells women the idea that how they look is what is most important because of how they express the ideal image of female beauty. On every cover of every magazine, advertisers portray women in the most ideal, impossibly perfect way possible that tells both men and women what a woman should look like, and that in particular, they exemplify white traits such as light skin, straight hair, and thin lips. However, the “beauty” of women that we see in advertising is not achievable by a normal member of our society simply because the flawlessness we see ...
Shrek --- “ugly” princess is green, overweight, and more masculine and the “beautiful” princess is thin and extremely feminine influences kids at an early age that fat is bad and thin is good.
4) Kilbourne, Jean. Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising’s Image of Women. Dir. Sut Jhally. DVD. Media Education Foundation, 2000.
To begin with, one way the media influences both men and women body images in a negative way is that it can lead people to have doubt in their appearance. In today's world many people, even children, begin to feel ashamed of their appearance because of the media showing a certain type of body image that is considered "perfect". From early times the media has influenced everyone that there are body types for both men and women that are considered to be perfect (Fast Facts, Teen Health). For example, in one situation elementary students were asked if they were satisfied with their appearance, and the students replied by saying that after they watch music videos of celebrities, such as Britney Spears, they felt self-conscious about their appearance
The average American is exposed to hundreds of advertisements per day. Advertisements targeted toward females have an enormous effect on women's thoughts, attitudes, perceptions, and actions. Most of the time, women don't even realize these advertisements are formulating self-image issues. These ideals surround them daily and they become naturalized to the ads. Advertising creates an entire worldview persuading women to emulate the images they see all around them. In order to create a market for their products, companies constantly prey upon women's self esteem, to feel like they aren't good enough just the way they are. This makes women constantly feel stressed out about their appearance (Moore). Advertising has a negative effect on women's body image, health, and self-esteem.