Jean Kilbourne's Essay 'Two Ways A Woman Can Get Hurt'

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Media has become an almost constant presence in the lives of both men and women throughout American culture, especially now in the twenty first century. Media and the people who create, provide, and portray it to the public have the important role of not only entertaining and presenting current events, but also promoting gender equality. They must work towards identifying the challenges that gender equality faces, as well as formulating solutions and promoting these solutions to benefit the cause. If this is done correctly then advancements in gender equality is made, however, if they fail, which is often the case, all of the advancements we as a society have made are negated and we are left with a skewed view of gender roles and relations. …show more content…
She also argues that “...sex [and sexuality] in advertising is pronographic because it dehumaizes and objectifies people, especially women…” (Kilbourne 465). Advertisements are often oversexualised in order to boost a company 's sales through connecting their product with a person’s sexual desires and in many cases their emotional needs. By doing this they end up objectifying the way people, especially women look, in many cases making them to public appear less of a person. This determinantal process in turn makes it easier to reinforce harmful stereotypes for women because they are dehumanized and no longer viewed …show more content…
This means that even on a linguistic level gender stereotypes are at play within our society. Ads and the media can then use these marked words to degrade women by describing them as sexual object as well as something that should not be taken seriously. These ads broadcast this to the next generation engraving this and other gender stereotypes into their impressionable mind and making it harder for equality in anyway to be

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