Jean Kilbourne Gender Roles

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In the introduction, Conley and Ramsey discuss Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly series, which details about portrayal of women in various advertisements. Kilbourne stated that there are five ways women are portrayed as subordinate in advertisements, such as making themselves smaller than normal, having their mouths covered, comparing them to young children, using bondage, or depicting violence against females. There are also several differences between men and women in advertisements and Kilbourne addressed seven of these differences. Kilbourne says that these are that women are seen as flawless, women are seen and portrayed as objects, and certain body parts of women are emphasized in these photos. They also mock or negatively portray the strive …show more content…
They chose to use paid subscription magazines since these are sent to people who want to read the magazine deliberately, and are most likely to read the whole magazine and view all of the advertisements in it. The magazines also were at least monthly, since weekly or more frequently published magazines tend to be more news oriented, so people may tend to not view the advertisements as much as something that they are reading for leisure. The magazines that they ended up studying were published in November 2009 and consisted of Elle, Allure, Glamour, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, InStyle, Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, Better Home and Gardens, Ladies Home Journal, Redbook, Southern Living, and Woman’s Day (Conley & Ramsey …show more content…
It has become routine and expected to see these flawless, submissive women in advertisements. It was surprising to see how women’s home magazines focused more on dismemberment photos than women’s fashion magazines. It is thought that fashion magazines are always the culprit of making women seem always beautiful and flawless. The biggest debate recently is whether or not these models should be photoshopped. This debate seems to be more geared toward women’s fashion magazines, not the women’s home magazines. It is also interesting to see that data shows that men are portrayed in a stereotypical way, as well, but it seems as if that is less harmful to them than the harm that can incur on women due to their

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