Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising’s Image of Women
To a great extent, advertising tells us who we are and who we should be. What does advertising tell us today about women? It tells us just as did it 10 and 20 and 30 years ago that what’s most important about women is how we look. The first thing the advertisers do is surround us with the image of ideal female beauty so we all learn how important it is for a women to be beautiful and exactly what it takes. Jean Kilbourne continues her groundbreaking analysis of advertising’s depiction of women in this most recent update of her pioneering Killing Us Softly series. In fascinating detail, Kilbourne decodes an array of print and television advertisements to reveal a pattern of disturbing and destructive gender stereotypes. Her analysis challenges us to consider the relationship between advertising and broader issues of culture, identity, sexism, and gender violence.
Sections: Does the beauty ideal still tyrannize women? | Does advertising still objectify women’s bodies? | Are the twin themes of liberation and weight control still linked? | Is sexuality still presented as women’s main concern? | Are young girls still sexualized? | Are grown women infantilized? | Are images of male violence against women still used to sell products?
Watch the full documentary now
Show this to three females and three males and watch their reaction.
As an evolving Spirit utilizing a male form, and as a player walking, talking, pondering my role on (stage Earth), I’m grateful for the clear message Jean Kilbourne delivers. It’s indeed a very worthwhile focus as she places emphasis on “the more things change the more things stay the same.” The underpinning term I wish to emphasize, from a personal evolutionary standpoint, is my ‘cognition’ toward this matter. ‘Cognition’, defined as destinct from emotion and volition. Should a ‘critical mass’ (observing all worthy matters) succeed in keeping emotions destinct then an evolution is also defined.
I love this video and the message it delivers is so important because women tend to believe it more than men that they have to ‘look good to feel good’ but we should believe in ourselves ad our indivisualities so that others also do and respect it.
very good, very true, but too short.
It’s sad that women in real life may suffer from how men treat them just because of unreal images created by mass media. Every human being has the equal right to freedom and respect. It’s demoralizing that women are presented as objects – of sexual abuse or violence. This abnormality needs to be fixed.
Advertising is not like that in many other countries, so don’t be misled that it’s inevitable!!
Powerful video, vey well made, which shows just how dangerously misleading advertisements are and how they effect women in a negative way.
I would recommend that evey woman, also every man should watch this and think about the terrible reprecussions such advertising has upon the youth of today.
Thanks for posting.
In the end ALL advertising (or selling) is bad.
The video is thought provoking and powerful. Women often forget that the “perfect” woman in the jeans ad is a product of airbrushing. Jean Kilbourne is right on with her perception of the ways in which a woman’s body is negatively presented in fashion magazine advertisements.
Wow, that was a really powerfull 30 min lecture.
I haven’t seen the actual documentaries yet.
Everything she said is true, and what even worse now is
that its not only in America, but almost in every part
of the world.
-The adverts/ objectification i mean.
: /
THis is a little dated, But quite accurate.
Well, it was accurate, she’s a good speaker…
But a few ads were over-analyzed… Sometimes not everything is a metaphor.
Otherwise, great job.
Look I hate to be “this guy” but in this country, in this day and age the constitution is extinct its not about freedom or liberty are all people being treated in the same way. No one cures diseases they treat it.In a recession when times are hard your government tells you to spend money not save then bail out the banks at your expense and last but certainly not least when it comes to advertising making money before any race, religion or gender. its up to us to raise are young ladies properly because big business doesn’t care.
Look, not to spit on the overall message… Because equality is peachy keen for all races, genders, whatever…
1. Advertisement is a symptom of an arguably sick society, not the cause. I mean, besides the basic mechanism that advertising runs on being that the fadism of the culture determines what is acceptable/useful, you run into a logical fallacy. “Perfect Female Beauty” has been around since Popes have been hammering off genitals. If you have an argument to make about that, I’m pretty sure you’d just be preaching to the choir, but at least you’d be preaching to the correct choir.
2. If you cherry-pick examples, and then make wild generalizations, then connect them to wilder explanations, then you end up with a weak point to begin with. What it boils down to is that there isn’t just some omniscient force called “The Media” which makes things to batter on the minds of women. There are going to be some bigots, some sexists, and some genuinely poor thinking people who come around and make Ads. If you look for them, you can find them. But it doesn’t really sync up with the media image at large, except when it it relates to point number one- above- and point number 3, following. Furthermore, suggesting that these images are a significant factor in causing violence towards women is whimsical at best. Even by saying things like “this alone isn’t causing battered women…” does not justify that one of your major points about advertisements and their relation to women that are being battered.
Or, as something I would say to a new speech student, “Just because you really care about something, doesn’t mean that you should put it in your speech, especially if it isn’t relevant.”
3. Part of male status is the subjection of women. If you want to appeal to the ideal male, you give them the fantasy that they will be so appealing to females, that they will come in troves and do anything you ask. Might I add, that this is true in some powerful women, too. “Cabana boys” don’t really exist to degrade the common woman. It’s a status thing. Why this is a dominant aspect in men, and a deviant in females could be a legitimate topic for feminists, or equalists, or what have you. But again, you’ll find that everyone’s saying the same thing, probably because the idea has a real and sensible base. However, since advertisements objectify status (because the very concept of advertisement is to objectify everyone within them- men, women, children, geckos… Wants, needs, fantasies… They are not supposed to be a culturally enhancing platform for progressive thought), they will use that figure of status in their assumption.
IE, if the general cultural ideal of status was that men were supposed to be on like terms with a morbidly obese woman who shopped at Walmart, then commercials would show just that. But I digress.
I’m going to be frank here. I’m a business guy, and I’m a speech guy. Advertisement is a terrible thing for a variety of reasons. However, maintaining the notion that current advertising is “Killing Women Softly” is mostly inaccurate. Maybe it was different in previous decades, but I’m afraid I wasn’t of the presence of mind to be able to know personally at those times. There are a number of major archetypal issues with how women are viewed and treated by society, but it is media presentations like this that cause people to seriously question how realistic movements made for equality are being taken. If you want to make the world a better place, start revisiting age-old traditions, and try to find meaningful ways of changing them.
Gosh, Anthony, thanks for mansplainin’ that to us.
Thanks, Jean.
You did a great job. Very impressive and provoking.
Yes this video is very informative and very true however the view of women that the advertising implies did not start with advertising, but with patriarchy itself, a social system, where the male gender is and has been revered and valued over the female gender. The gender roles that appear in advertising were defined early on in our society by men. Historically and traditionally until around the 1920′s women were not allowed to take part in society at all. They were instead prescribed a role of “femininity” that was created by men in order to keep women in the home taking care of her husband and the domestic duties. Women were then and continue to be considered something “other” because women are not men, the default sex. The horrific advertising messages displayed in this video are a symptom of the opinions of women that already exist in our society.
It’s interesting to me because I have been witnessing a kind of amnesia in our society. I too was guilty of this amnesia prior to my decades of research into patriarchy, woman’s history and feminism. Since sexism and the oppression of women isn’t currently as blatently in our faces like it was in our recent past, we have forgotten that it existed at all and that patriarchy, a social system that was created by men and continues to favor men over women is no longer a problem. This of course I realize is not only due to memory loss but due to the fact that men and women don’t learn about the history of women but instead exclusively about the history of men in school. In academics unless we take elective “Woman’s Studies” courses which were recently created due to this disparity, we do not learn about the enslavement of women by men, the woman’s suffrage movement and feminism that ensued because of this oppression and the fact that women have had to fight in order to gain just basic human rights that men have always enjoyed.
What is astonishing is that as recent as the 1970′s women won the right to control their own reproductive health, only 40 years ago! In the 1920′s women finally won the right to vote. Prior to this, women weren’t allowed an education and were expected to marry and take care of her husband, children and their elderly family members. Men actually believed that women had smaller brains then men. They also believed that a woman’s energy was taken up by her reproductive organs; therefore, she had no energy left for anything else, except to take care of her husband and home. And the men had quack science that backed them up on these false assessments. Therefore women were taught to believe this nonsense themselves and for the most part they did.
Further, women were not allowed to have their own identities, but instead had to take on their husbands identity. If a woman displayed interests or passions of her own, she was sent to be fixed, given drugs, shock treatment and if that didn’t fix her, she was committed by her husband to a mental institution. A woman’s role was to only make the husband look better in society. To be a trophy wife. Women were pressured to be satisfied and happy in this prescribed femininity and if they weren’t, they felt like there was something wrong with them not something wrong with the prescription. The sad part is that for the most part women had this empty feeling inside, that there domestic duties could not fulfill. During these times from 1920′s to 1970′s women were given the sole task of decorating their homes and hosting social gatherings and settled into the “Domestic Goddess” phase. This is the origins of woman’s consumerism and boy what consumers women became!
Advertisers know this history all too well. They understand intimately the psychology behind trying to fulfill oneself through buying things. So then knowing this history, why are we surprised that advertisers have these ideas about women?
What we see in advertising is a giant mirror that displays the sexist ideas that we already have imprinted in our minds and/or subconscious back at us. Advertisers perpetuate this aspect of our society because it is lucrative to them. They depend on the fact that women historically in patriarchy have been oppressed, objectified & devalued and due to this negative conditioning believe that they can only have value if they are men. Women then, because they are not men, have to get their sense of self or value through their association with men. The outcome of this is that women became literally and then later more unconsciously dependent on men for their well being. This dependence is being exploited by advertising agencies to sell products.
Think about it. The advertisers understand that unhappy insecure women buy more stuff. That women attempt to fill their emptiness by buying things; hence, the shopaholic. That this is what women have done and continue to do; therefore, they can literally bank on it. Historically due to their conditioning, women have become the largest consumers, not just because of their unhappiness, but also because they tend to be the ones who purchase their household supplies including their husband’s and children’s. Women are the “gatherers” in our society, left over from the hunter gatherer times. Advertisers know this too. Advertisers know that women have to keep feeling insecure and insignificant in our society in order to be the avid consumers that they have been and continue to be. So essentially they understand fundamentally that if they want to get to a man’s money, they have to go through the woman.
I always wondered why then the advertisers don’t have commercials that are more empowering to women. If women are the consumers who are spending the money, then why aren’t women being catered to? Well, because that has no proven track record of being lucrative yet and even more damning is that psychology doesn’t support this either. Do empowered women buy more things? Probably not. Fulfillment comes from within not from external means. When the value of women increases in our society, advertising will follow. I do however believe that advertising will continue devaluing women as long as they can get away with it due to it’s proven track record for making money. Therefore, change will be slow in this area and will probably have to be forced. How do we force it? Buy not buying products from the advertisers who perpetuate these negative ideas about women. Will this happen naturally if women become more empowered and more fulfilled? Yes. When our society begins to value women and the power structure becomes more egalitarian, spending habits will change and so will advertising.
Advertising is a reflection of society and the outcome of supply and demand. Let’s demand better.
This is the worst propaganda I have ever seen with the use of such loaded words and ideas. Anyone with an intelligent mind can see through that and that she constantly twisted the message inside advertisements. All in all, advertising is not meant for the faint-hearted and it’s meant to be fun and full of lies (so that people like yourself will buy from them). Just because you can’t see through the deception, doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t. For you information, when someone says a product is the best/most effective/expert-recommended, 99% of the times are false as everyone brand would say the same thing.
Could i possibly get the 34 minutes and 23 seconds that my teacher made me waste watching this video. She is passive cause she is in an elevator and we all know elevators are a dangerious place. This lady is some kind of retarted.
As a feminist and a pornographer I object to the dehumanisation of sexuality by it it’s association with products for sale. I find a whole range of sexual images acceptable to myself, but not when there is inference that innate sexiness is somehow linked to particular consumption!
Look, I’m not going to slam on anyone in particular, but a lot of people are going on about how these images STARTED or what CAUSED them. She’s not arguing about any of that, people – she’s only saying they exist. And they do. If you want to go into WHY, then you’re watching the wrong documentary.
Caroline, it may be that pornography itself is inherently dehumanising. It encourages a person, often alone, to become sexually aroused based solely on another person’s appearance and physical action. The person viewing has no relationship or knowledge of the subject’s personality–his or her heart, mind, etc. The viewer only knows the physical aspect of the subject. Thus, pornography encourages a person to see other human beings based solely on their physical appearance. Since our physical appearance is only a small portion of our beings, we must conclude that pornography dehumanises to a certain extent. This is true philosophically, but I tend to feel as though it is also true in reality. I have so many friends and loved ones who have unexplainably turned quite mean and manipulative right after becoming addicted to pornography. This isn’t conclusively causal, but it is interesting to think about.
Man is stronger than woman; that’s why man have certain tasks and woman have other. This doesn’t mean that man have to rule woman. Sex is a feeling and is natural to man and woman. But anything being advertised is just for money, people do it for money. We just have to deal with it. For those who say that woman is portray like an object, I think is a woman fault herself because most women are best friends to money and will do anything for money. In the other hand, men take advantage of, watch and enjoy what women do for money. Porn has its advantage too to some people who are rejected by other, and it’s both man and woman who are addicted to porn but mostly man. Women do provoke man everyday by the way they dress, walk and speak. Some women cannot go out without make up, why is that? Why women always try to look sexy? for who? I guess men. Men are every day targets in the street, at school, at work, every where, especially if he has money. Man can seduce woman and probably get nothing, but women are good for it, they use their allure, or seductions to attire men to themselves, by the end the man get blame for it. Most men have high sexual drives, what most women don’t. Watching porn is just another way for people to please themselves without hurting nobody else and to keep them disease-free since there are many sexual transmitted diseases around.
Brilliant, a clear and often entertaining talk. Makes you notice these messages implicit in advertising that are psychologically (and sometimes physically) damaging to girls and women and alienate true beauty and attraction.
Equality, appreciation and respect for women in the west is an illusion.It’s one of the biggest lies that we women bought into.Take for instance the fact that women earn less money than a man in the exact same job.Enough said.
What a GREAT documentary. She was right in everything she said.
So true.
The documentray was very interesting from the beginning to the end. Brilliant.
I think this documentary should be shown to girls and teens.
Even at school!
@Lola
This is one shortcoming. Are there any others to back your case that are relevant in Western society? I as a woman have never experienced any sort of gender discrimination in any aspect of my life. I’m going to say that I represent a fairly new generation as I am quite young, and the attitudes towards females in the public realm that I have been exposed to have been not prejudiced to a detectable degree. Yes, I’m aware that this is anecdotal but I think that the general mindset of the youth is certainly important because they are indeed the future leaders of Earth.
Also, your attitude is not only negative but unproductive. Complaining, and claiming that women are deluded does nothing at all to solve your so-called problem.
I don’t worry too much about it cuz my standard of beauty is far from the ‘natural, blonde, cookie-cutter, mainstream’ norm. Ladies should at least take major solace in the idea that womens’ portrayal in advertising is totally as bad for guys, maybe moreso than you think.
Men’s magazines are filled with swimsuit models and such, and seriously, all it’s doing is giving a message to guys that they might have a chance. And they don’t. Never, ever will. You think women get moody over not looking like an airbrushed model? Try telling some random douchebags who actually get upset at the thought of their dates, girlfriends, even WIVES not turning them on like those ads – and actually writing to the magazines about it – will NEVER have anything close, and they completely freak out.
I’d say ‘scary’ freak out, except I’ll admit, it feels kinda good and it’s pretty funny to watch how enraged like tantruming kids they get when you take the time to remind them mediocrity is the hub of their existence, and it’ll never change.
In a way, I always also found it kind of healthy, or like in a strange way I’m helping out a fellow American – cuz who better to remind some **** that no amount of wishing or lusting will ever get him what he wants, than from someone (like a woman) who’s been there a thousand times and lived to ***** slap him with that reality?
Just a response to the arrogant 8472 above:
Your comment,
“IE, if the general cultural ideal of status was that men were supposed to be on like terms with a morbidly obese woman who shopped at Walmart, then commercials would show just that. But I digress.”
I digress! It worked, you have been programmed! Why shouldn’t you be on “like terms” with this woman? Maybe she has a Ph.D. and is shopping at Wal-Mart for the best prices for supplies to donate to a shelter? You obviously feel superior in reign because of her looks.
in reply to “A person”. I don’t think its over analysed at all but rather the way we look upon gender and race etc are so well ingrained in us and we learn how we should think about “the other” from a very early age(something that was also mentioned in the documentary). The way advertisers want us to perceive the world and each other has become normalised and mainstream to the point that they, themselves, are perhaps not even reflecting over it as being sexist or racist!Although I would say that every move is very well thought out.
Great documentary-should be shown in schools.
She talks as if the consumer’s desire to be good looking is a new phenomenon driven by commercialism. That’s rediculous. People have always been interested in their looks. Biologically, we are attracted to good looking people because it denotes health and vigor (i.e. the ability to birth and raise children). Magazines and ads show people who are impossibly good-looking because it’s what sells.
Her sex negativity got on my nerves, too. I hate it when people treat sex as if it’s holy, and porn is evil. Many of the ads she showed were trying to sell products through fantasy, which is what porn is all about. Studies have shown that porn has no negative effect on the vast majority of men who watch it. I enjoy porn, myself, because it helps to get me in the mood and thus, strengthen my relationship with my boyfriend.
And to say that these ads lead to the objectification and abuse of women is ********. If anything, women enjoy greater freedoms and power in their relationships than ever before. I mean, abuse still happens, but at least now, abusers are condemned and women have resources for help.
To Lori:
Why are you and others missing the “big” picture? This is what is being taught to our children–and it has nothing to do with monitoring our children–this is everywhere and you can’t be with your children everywhere!! An immature young child I’m sure doesn’t have the requisite abilities to distinguish facts from “fantasy”–if you want to watch porn, all the power to you–however, it shouldn’t be public or on prime time t.v. and forced down the public’s throat, especially children who just might misinterpret the messages!!!!
Just as I thought, this woman is a feminist. Only feminists would say things like this. She doesn’t want females to be feminine and has a problem with it. You can be feminine and still be strong mentally, you dont have to be passive.
Dear Henry:
You obviously have no clue what a feminist is . . . which is a major problem! Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jO9p6e4SWLM&feature=player_embedded to get a CLUE!!!!!!!!!!
“…advertising tells us who we are and who we should be.” You got it all wrong. I am advertiser, and a man, and here’s how it really works:
- Advertising doesn’t tell anyone who he/she is, and who he/she should be. It merely exploits desires you already have.
- It’s a fact of nature that men prefer pretty women. And women love men. So woman knows the prettier she is, the easier for her is to get the man she wants. Advertising does not force anything on woman, it merely exploits her basic desires.
- When the advertising (featuring women) is targeted to men, it has nothing to do with women :). When a male brain sees a hot woman, he gets horny, and the only things he wants is to hump her. And he will do whatever he needs to make it happen. Hence, advertising tells him: buy this and you’ll get to hum this hot babe. And he buys it.
In short, there really is no conspiracy. Advertising merely sells what people want to buy. Man wants pretty woman. So woman wants to be pretty. She wants to be desirable. And it’s basic biology, our evolutionary heritage, not male chauvinism.
Man have the same problem. We even have two heads, and only enough blood to run one at a time – and this gets us in all kinds of troubles.
Advertising only exploits the desires you already have. It’s not advertisings fault, it’s yours. And if don’t want to participate in evolutionary race, than don’t. Nobody is forcing you.
I have to post this link. Saying the same thing but in a fraction of the time and waaay funnier http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9fFOelpE_8
fantastic. a little dated, but still really relevant. when’s killing us softly 4 out? it’s about time!