Summary Of Killing USftly 4 By Jean Kilbourne

In Killing Us Softly 4, Jean Kilbourne discusses the power of advertising and how it has facilitated and legitimized the objectification of women. As a woman and a former model, Kilbourne argues that advertisements are a powerful educational force because they are everywhere. Because of this, the message is quickly processed so it easier to influence someone’s subconscious. Advertisements are also powerful because they sell values and concepts telling society how women should look like.
The sole purpose of and advertisement is to inform and convince the public to buy their product. Since we live in a consumer society, companies are trying to inform the public of their products, so advertisements are everywhere. There are advertisements for

For women, advertisements focus on beauty and weight. Models are young and unusually thin with large breasts. This body image is photoshopped because no one can ever have those body measurements. However, this is what society expects women to look like. When women are exposed to these images every day, they begin to aspire to look like the models in the advertisements. These unreal expectations have severe consequences because it leads women to develop eating disorders to be thinner or get cosmetic surgery. One example Kilbourne gave was that Fiji produced higher rates of eating disorders after televisions were introduced. Kilbourne also mentioned that in the United States, 91% of cosmetic surgery is performed on women demonstrating how influential advertisement’s expectations for women are. With that being said, women are more objectified than men in our society and it’s evident in

There were advertisements for men’s jeans and cologne that Kilbourne demonstrated where a woman is nearly naked, or several men are hovering over one woman. These images show women being passive, vulnerable, and delicate where men are shown as dominant and powerful. How men are portrayed in advertisements is completely different than women, but men are also negatively affected by them. For men, advertisements sell the idea that men are supposed to be bigger and stronger, so this suggests that men shouldn’t be sensitive because doing so would be feminine. How these women are posed helps legitimize violence against women because they are objectified to sex objects and are see as the weaker sex. Seeing these images while growing up leads boys to believe that women are meant to be dominated. Kilbourne added that advertisements have gotten worse since she began the Killing Us Softly Series because there is an increase in children being sexualized for advertisements. She demonstrated images where women are wearing girl’s outfits or girls wearing too much make to look womanly. These images incite child predators and has also produced higher rates of teen