Jean Kilbourne speaks on Advertising, Image, and Women's capacity
to lead
By Maria Pascucci
(Originally published on Blue Jean Online)
On April 27, 2002, women and girls of all ages gathered together
at the Holiday Inn Airport in Rochester, N.Y., to discuss the
pervasive power of advertising and its destructive images of women.
Renowned speaker and scholar Jean Kilbourne addressed the topic
of "Advertising, Image, and Women's Capacity to Lead."
Kilbourne is the author of Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising
Changes the Way We Think and Feel and the creator of award-winning
documentaries such as Killing Us Softly, Pack of Lies, and Slim
Hopes. Heralded in The New York Times Magazine as one of the most
popular speakers on college campuses today, Kilbourne travels
across the country educating the public about the importance of
media literacy in the world.
Kilbourne's interest in the media's portrayal of women began over
30 years ago, when she started clipping out personally offensive
ads and posting them on her refrigerator. Her fridge quickly became
a testimonial "of what it means to be a woman in this culture."
Those ads told women that femininity meant becoming flawless beauties
through product consumption, using body language to attract male
attention, and maintaining an aura of innocence to remain sexy.
Sadly, not much has changed today.
Kilbourne's presentation featured a slide show of ad clippings
from popular magazines compiled for her latest film, Killing Us
Softly III. In a series of shocking but all-too-familiar ads,
teenage girls and young women were dismembered, spotlighted with
their lips sewn shut, tied up, glamorized for looking anorexic,
and even murdered. One ad targeting a teen audience featured a
young emaciated girl with her legs pulled close to her chest,
as if trying to disappear. The caption read, "The more you
subtract, the more you add."
Kilbourne explained how ads that eroticize rape and sexualize
women contribute to creating a society that has less trouble digesting
violence against women. "Men would not oppress what they
see as equal," Kilbourne said, but ads that objectify women
encourage men to think of women as unequal and inferior. Most
men are not violent, Kilbourne said, but most are too afraid to
speak out about violence against women.
Ads also create impossible standards for women to live up to,
and one disturbing result is the lengths to which women and girls
will go to achieve this ideal. Kilbourne used the example of breast
implants. "Many times women will lose all feeling in their
breasts after surgery, and consequently they merely become an
object of someone else's pleasure, not their own. She explained,
"Thus, the transformation of a woman from subject to object
is complete."
Men are also becoming victims of objectification, Kilbourne said,
although the message is different. The ideal man is physically
big and strong, while the ideal woman is small and takes up little
space. The tough and powerful man considers compassion and sensitivity
signs of weakness and displays what Kilbourne calls "contempt
for the feminine qualities."
Many have protested that advertising does not affect the way they
see the world, but Kilbourne argues, "We internalize these
ads, and they unconsciously alter the way we perceive normalcy."
Kilbourne pointed out the absurdity of the argument that says
that parents who don't like the sex, violence, and drugs in the
media should simply keep their children from seeing it. That,
Kilbourne said, is like telling parents, "The air is polluted,
don't let your children breathe."
Following Kilbourne's slide show, local leaders and panel participants
led discussions about moving forward and fighting back against
these degrading images. The most important point is that women
and men of all ages have the power to change advertising. We do
not have to be passive victims. We can boycott products whose
ad campaigns promote harmful images, or write letters to advertisers
expressing our concerns. We can also work to bring media literacy
into schools and join organizations to fight against negative
advertising. Kilbourne does not believe that censorship is the
key to fighting this problem. Instead, we must "[create]
an educated public that will not tolerate the existence of harmful
advertising and that will actively fight against it."
Reprint Rights Available.
