Hurt Advertising And Violence By Jean Kilbourne

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A person may read a magazine, a billboard or watch a TV commercial and not notice anything offensive; however, the advertisement subconsciously sends messages to people that can affect how society sees them. In the article, “Two Ways a Woman Can get Hurt; Advertising and Violence,” written by Jean Kilbourne (1999), discusses how advertisement can be degrading and damaging towards men and women especially to women. She uses effective logical appeal, ethical appeal and emotional appeal to make an argument in her writing to create awareness in a society that is deceitful in dehumanizing women to sell products. Kilbourne uses logical appeal in many images from ads and cases around the world to provide evidence for her readers on how advertisements …show more content…
An example of this when she uses She explains a report by the American Association of University Women found that seventy percent of female students in grade eight to eleven have been sexually harassed. This statistic gains reader’s attention to continue reading because being sexually harassed at an early age is a such a disturbing situation. One example is when she uses a female high school student who was tormented by boys at her vocational school the girl explains “The boys call me a slut, bitch. They call me a ten-timer because they say I go with ten guys at the same time. I put up with it because I have no choice. The teachers say it’s because the boys think I’m pretty” (p.507). This story evokes emotions, making the reader feel sad for the girl because she has to go through disturbing torments each and every day at school which is supposed to be a safe learning place for kids. Readers can also feel angry by the teacher’s response to the girl, and not doing anything about the name calling. Lastly, she uses another story to evoke reader’s emotions. “A young woman accused William Kennedy Smith of raping her as an indication of her immorality. A jury acquitted Smith, whose alleged history of violence against women was not permitted to be introduced at trial” (p.495 b). Anyone who reads this case will feel outraged and disgusted that a rapist could get away with what he did, because of the type of panties she was wearing. In conclusion, Kilbourne used Logos and pathos to show many pictures with her descriptive writing about the victimization and subjection of women in advertisements. She did it by using ads, statistics and cases around the world using ethos to convince her arguments. And logos in explaining why men treat women as

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