Women and Advertisements

Jean Kilbourne’s “Killing Us Softly” video brought up some interesting points about the way women are represented in advertisements.  Kilbourne shows different advertisements of women and discusses how these women are made to look as sex objects and not human beings.  She shows how in these advertisements the women are almost always photo shopped which creates an image that a woman could never naturally obtain.  This is similar to Steinberg’s article about Barbie and how women can be portrayed with a perfect figures and features but this image is unachievable.  What I found interesting about Kilbourne’s work is that this portrayal of women creates an ideology that can effect both men and women.  By being constantly exposed to these types of advertisements, or even Barbies, women feel in order to be beautiful they need to look like these women.  This negatively affects women because it can lead to eating or emotional disorders.  Furthermore, as Kilbourne points out, since men are also exposed to these advertisements this can cause them to judge real life women much more harshly and think of them only as objects.  I thought these videos were very interesting in showing how this concept of women can effect both men and women in a negative manner.