In today’s society, advertisements are everywhere: on televisions, on newspapers, on magazines, on walls, on billboards, and even on buses. These advertisements cover every single surface available in order to catch people’s attention and influence them to buy the product that’s being promoted. The desire to promote products in order to capitalize profit is normal to today’s society and it’s even seen as the norm. Advertisements aren’t bad for they are the driving force in today’s consumer society, but it is what they use in order promote products that caused many debates in regards to female rights. In her “Still Killing Us Softly 4” documentary, Jean Kilbourne drew a line that linked the idea of women in society to how women are being portrayed in advertisements. The main point in “Still Killing Us Softly 4” is to point out the fact that the way women are being portray in advertisements are being reproduced on women in society today. Kilbourne tried to raise more awareness in this situation by reinforcing her point through how the women in ads shape the thoughts of society today. The advertisement industry is one of the largest industries in the world with its worth at 250 billion dollars a year in United States alone. An average American will see about 3000 ads everyday and watch about 2 years worth of commercials on TV. With advertisement being such a popular culture in today’s society, it is easy for advertisement to shape the way society view women by continuously objectifying them in order to sell their products. In every ad, the women are always photo shopped. These photo shopped women display flawlessness, something that cannot be achieve by real women. Even though society knows these women are not real, the make-believe women still become the ideal female beauty. At young age, girls began to learn what is beautiful in the society’s standard. And it is also at a young age that girls began to spent time and money trying to achieve this ideal look. Advertisements are part of the mass media, an agent of socialization, in which helps shape a child’s personality and thoughts. With daily contacts with these types of “ideal” women advertisements, the child’s brain is subconsciously processing what the society is telling them to see, think, and say. The concept of a perfect female body and look is so deeply rooted in today’s society that when a normal woman can’t achieve the ‘ideal’ look, she felt a sense of disappointment. Some women take it to the extreme when trying to get the perfect body that only less than 5% of the American population have. These women and girls used methods of dieting pills and starvation (both are advertised in some ways) in order to achieve the look. These decisions are not anyone’s fault but society’s. Using the sociological perspective demonstrated in chapter 1 of the textbook, Jean Kilbourne talked about how it’s the society that made women think negatively about themselves and it’s not the women’s fault that they can’t be beautiful. When discussing the ideal beauty of a woman, race is a subject that one cannot avoid. Although race is not real, as discussed in the textbook, due to our 99.9% DNA similarity, race is real in the eyes of society. We behave like there is race and so race does exist in our society and continue to exist in the mass media portrayal. In the film, it stated that colored women are only considered beautiful when they have similar characteristics as the white models and lighten their skin to closely match the society’s standards. In the film, Kilbourne demonstrated this when she pulled out an
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The difference between the portray of women and men is the fact that men are always portray as someone that’s stronger and more powerful, while women are always portray as someone that’s fragile and less powerful. One of the major differences between the objectification of male and female is that the male’s body is not judged. Men, unlike women, do not obsess with their body for society does not judge them like a women’s body. But like the young girls’ minds that are been shaped by the ads, young boys’ minds are also being shaped through ads that portray men as
The difference between the portray of women and men is the fact that men are always portray as someone that’s stronger and more powerful, while women are always portray as someone that’s fragile and less powerful. One of the major differences between the objectification of male and female is that the male’s body is not judged. Men, unlike women, do not obsess with their body for society does not judge them like a women’s body. But like the young girls’ minds that are been shaped by the ads, young boys’ minds are also being shaped through ads that portray men as