Activity #7 - Killing Us Softly

According to the Jean Kilbourne film, advertising sells a lot more than products. It also sells values, images, and concepts of love, sexuality, romance, success, and normalcy. These messages tell us what should be important to women. The number one thing that should be important to women is how we look. Advertisements are filled with images of beauty and the average person sees nearly 3,000 ads per day. Therefore, we are surrounded by these images and we learn from a very early age that we must spend ample amounts of time, energy and money to try to live up to these beauty standards. We need to care about these gendered messages because advertising is extremely powerful and affects many of us. These messages cause us to be “trapped in rigid roles and in very crippling definitions of femininity and masculinity.” These are basically the teachers of society’s standards, and they are sending very narrow messages. We need to change these attitudes that are found in advertisements because consciously or not they all affect us very deeply. By continuing to allow these sorts of advertisements, we are putting at stake our “ability to have authentic and freely chosen lives.”

The Dove film quickly flashes through pictures of what advertisements show should be our beauty ideal. The qualities include being gorgeous, skinny, scantily clothed, and overly made up. The film is trying to promote the fact that these ideals are unrealistic and children especially need to understand that. That movie ends by stating, “Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.” The beauty industry has so much power that we cannot allow it to overwhelm and influence our children. Through our readings, it has been repeated multiple times that culture is composed in very complex manners based on ideals and trends in society. The group that has the most influence on cultural standards is also the most powerful. “Corporate power, advertising, and the fashion, cosmetics, and entertainment industries all help create standards for us and reinforce gender relations” (pg 237). These ideals are not being set by the average woman who is trying to live up to them. Therefore, the images become very distorted and unrealistic. Many times white men are constructing the beauty standards and therefore, women have no control on these issues. We simply continue to try and fit in and attain much distorted images of who we should be.

In a Maxim magazine, I found an ad for Tag Body Spray. It depicts a man sleeping in his bed while three women are bouncing on the bed in bras and underwear having a pillow fight. I suppose the ad is trying to say that wearing body spray will drive women crazy. This ad has many alternative messages. The women bouncing on the bed are all very skinny, quite young, and wearing very little. This is sending a message to young women about what guys want. Young girls may also think that flaunting your body in front of men is sexy. The girls in the ad appear so happy that young girls may try to reenact this. The website for this product is SleepLess-ScoreMore.com. It seems to be saying that women will become very promiscuous just because you change your scent. The ad is completely belittling women and their femininity. Good cologne is always a plus; however, there is no way just this would cause women to rip off their clothes and become so sexually playful. It all comes down to the fact that the ad is using sex to sell their product and disregarding all intelligence and power a women has.

When I was watching the Kilbourne film, I was honestly appalled at some of the clips from advertisements that were shown. Especially, the final ad which stated, “The more you subtract the more you add.” I have always believed that advertisements are very unrealistic and we should not allow them to affect us; however, this final ad is just obscene. With so much censoring that occurs on tv shows and movies, you would think that they would think to replicate these censorship ideas in advertisements. For marketing teams to try to sell their products with such demeaning messages behind them is absolutely wrong. I really enjoyed seeing the Dove film though. It sends a message that is very overlooked by society, but which needs extreme attention. It is good to see that some companies are taking these issues seriously and trying to make a positive impact.