Jean Kilbourne

Jean Kilbourne’s documentary “Killing Us Softly” and article “The More You Subtract, the More You Add” and Susannah Stern’s article “All I Really Needed to Know (About Beauty) I Learned by Kindergarten” shows that ads only sell products and not ideas. But behind the rose-tinted glass, ads show that women are being labeled by marketers. This leads to stereotyping and generalizations of women. When something becomes generalized by the population it is automatically accepted as the truth. Labels on women should not stigmatize them and should not exist. Ads do not let women be who they want to be, but what advertisement considers who a woman should be. This demonstrates how advertisements twist the ideals of what a woman should be by enhancing …show more content…
Kilbourne addresses that “girls grow into women afraid to speak up for themselves or use their voice to protect themselves or to use their own voice” (Kilbourne 264). This is a strange reality as women and girls are scared to talk and protect themselves because society tells them that if they do they are considered an outcast and do not deserve to be happy. To women, this is a “time of such self-consciousness and terror of shame and humiliation” (Kilbourne 261). As the social values that are implicated on women push them into forgetting that they are human and not a plastic doll. Nevertheless in a world where mass media dominates culture ads portrays women should not speak up, shout out, talk louder, or be proud of themselves. Women that are silenced are told they need to accomplish flawless to be successful in life. Women are told at a young age that they need to be pretty, to do well in life. Girls as young as five will tell you that “if you are not pretty people will make fun of you” (Stern, 26). Kindergartens are instructed to be thin, and beautiful to get …show more content…
When a girl is constantly stressed out about not fitting in, she can go numb. In Kilbourne’s documentary, she states that “girls striving to achieve this look and feeling ashamed and guilty when we fail. And failure is inevitable because the ideal is based on absolute flawlessness.” With that failure, most girls cannot cope as they need to be perfect or they would be defamed. So she does for the one solution that she has. She can grab a razor and glide it across her wrists, so she can feel something just to know that she is still alive or because she thinks that she deserve it. Or she shoves her finger down her throat to make herself thin. And think that eating half a bowl of oatmeal is enough to eat for the entire day. For the reason being, it is considered an achievement to be thin and beautiful. Women of all ages, diverse interests that come from different places all experience the same things when it comes to women’s ideals. They are all silenced to the point where they lose themselves. Girls need a reminded from looking at all the ads in the world that what they are, and what they are