3 The dangerous ways ads see women Jean Kilbourne TEDxLafayetteCollege
Summary
TLDRThe speaker discusses her journey in examining the portrayal of women in advertising since the late 1960s. She highlights the evolution of advertising's unrealistic and harmful depictions, the impact on self-esteem, and the objectification of both genders. The talk emphasizes the increasing pressure on women to conform to an unattainable ideal and the normalization of sexual violence in media. However, she also notes the emergence of activism and media literacy, offering hope for change towards a more responsible and respectful representation in advertising.
Takeaways
- 📚 The speaker began analyzing the image of women in advertising in the late 1960s and was possibly the first to do so, noticing a pattern in how women were portrayed.
- 🎥 In 1979, the speaker created the film 'Killing Us Softly,' which critiques the portrayal of women in advertising and has been remade three times since then.
- 🤔 The speaker often faces the question of what sparked their interest in this topic, attributing it to various factors including involvement in the women's movement and personal experiences in media and modeling.
- 👚 The speaker discusses the unrealistic and harmful expectations set for women's appearances, exacerbated by the use of Photoshop in modern advertising.
- 🧍♂️ Men are also photoshopped in ads, but the changes tend to make them appear larger or more muscular, unlike the thinness and youthfulness imposed on women.
- 👧 The sexualization of girls starts at a very young age in advertising, with products and imagery that normalize dangerous attitudes towards children.
- 👦 Boys are not exempt from sexualization; they are encouraged to view girls as sex objects and to be sexually precocious, fostering a culture of objectification.
- 👙 Advertising often dismembers and insults women's bodies, promoting an unrealistic and unattainable standard of beauty that affects self-esteem and body image.
- 🚫 The speaker emphasizes that the sexualization and objectification in advertising are not just harmless; they can lead to violence and have serious consequences for society.
- 🌍 Despite the challenges, there is hope for change. The speaker highlights the work of organizations, activists, and the growing awareness about media literacy and the impact of advertising.
- 💪 The speaker calls for a collective effort to challenge these images and create a better world, emphasizing the role of an educated and active public in driving profound and global changes.
Q & A
When did the speaker start collecting and analyzing images of women in advertising?
-The speaker started collecting and analyzing images of women in advertising in the late 1960s.
What was the speaker's first film about advertising's image of women?
-The speaker's first film was titled 'Killing Us Softly,' which was about advertising's image of women and has been remade three times since its creation in 1979.
What is the speaker's view on the impact of advertising on children's self-esteem?
-The speaker believes that advertising, with its unrealistic and idealized images, negatively impacts children's self-esteem, particularly girls, leading to issues such as eating disorders, depression, and low self-esteem.
How does the speaker describe the evolution of advertising targeting children?
-The speaker notes that advertising targeting children has become more widespread, powerful, and sophisticated, with marketers starting to target children as young as six months old, the age at which they can recognize corporate logos.
What does the speaker suggest is the most common misconception about the influence of advertising?
-The most common misconception, according to the speaker, is that people believe they are personally exempt from the influence of advertising, often claiming that ads have no effect on them.
How has the use of Photoshop in advertising affected the speaker's perspective on the image of women?
-The speaker views the use of Photoshop in advertising as exacerbating the problem of unrealistic beauty standards, making it even more impossible for women to live up to these ideals and contributing to negative self-esteem.
What does the speaker argue is the difference in the way men's and women's faces are read in advertising?
-The speaker argues that women's faces are often sexualized and objectified, while men's faces are less likely to be dismembered or altered in a way that detracts from their humanity.
How does the speaker describe the impact of sexualized advertising on girls?
-The speaker describes the impact as harmful, stating that girls exposed to sexualized images from a young age are more prone to negative outcomes such as low self-esteem, depression, and eating disorders.
What is the speaker's opinion on the normalization of violence against women in advertising?
-The speaker believes that advertising often normalizes and trivializes violence against women, creating a climate where women are seen as objects, which can lead to real-world violence.
What positive change does the speaker highlight in the fight against harmful advertising practices?
-The speaker highlights the emergence of numerous films, books, organizations, and media literacy programs in schools as positive changes, along with political action and activism, which give her hope for a better future.
What is the speaker's call to action for the audience?
-The speaker calls for an aware, active, and educated public to challenge harmful images and create a better world, emphasizing that everyone has a stake in this issue.
Outlines
📚 The Origins of Advertising's Impact on Women
The speaker began examining the portrayal of women in advertising in the late 1960s, noticing a pattern that defined femininity. They created a slide presentation and later a film titled 'Killing Us Softly,' which has been remade three times. The speaker's early experiences in media and beauty pageants, along with societal pressures on women to be thin and beautiful, are discussed. The speaker also highlights the unrealistic standards set by advertising, exacerbated by the use of Photoshop, and the alienation felt by women who do not meet these standards.
🎭 The Detrimental Effects of Beauty Standards
This paragraph delves into the unrealistic and often impossible beauty standards perpetuated by advertising, affecting both women and men, but in different ways. Women's bodies are dismembered and objectified, with a focus on thinness and youthfulness, while men are increasingly objectified but without the same societal consequences. The speaker emphasizes the impact of these images on self-esteem and the normalization of sexual violence, as well as the infantilization of girls and sexualization of young boys.
🚼 The Sexualization of Children and Cultural Shifts
The speaker addresses the sexualization of children, with products like padded bras and high heels marketed towards young girls and boys being encouraged to view girls as sex objects. The lack of sex education in the United States is contrasted with the pervasive sexual messages children receive from advertising and media. The trivialization of sex in advertising is criticized, along with the normalization of violence against women, as these images create a climate where women are seen as objects.
🌟 Hope for Change and the Role of Activism
The final paragraph offers a note of hope, acknowledging that the speaker is no longer alone in their fight against harmful advertising practices. The emergence of films, books, organizations, and media literacy education signals progress. Young activists like Julia Bloom, who successfully petitioned a magazine to limit Photoshop use, inspire the speaker. The paragraph concludes with a call to action for a more profound and global change, emphasizing the importance of an educated and aware public.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Advertising
💡Objectification
💡Self-esteem
💡Photoshop
💡Sexualization
💡Body Image
💡Media Literacy
💡Cultural Norms
💡Feminism
💡Consumerism
💡Activism
Highlights
The speaker began collecting and analyzing images of women in advertising in the late 1960s, identifying a pattern in the portrayal of women.
In 1979, the speaker created the film 'Killing Us Softly,' which critiques the image of women in advertising and has been remade three times since.
The speaker discusses the unrealistic beauty standards set for women in advertising, which have become more intense with the use of Photoshop.
Older women are only considered attractive if they maintain a youthful appearance, a standard that is impossible to meet without digital alteration.
The speaker points out the different ways men and women are photoshopped, with men being made to appear larger and women thinner and more youthful.
The advertising industry's influence on children is highlighted, with marketing targeting babies as young as six months old.
The speaker emphasizes the subconscious and cumulative impact of advertising on individuals, despite common beliefs of being unaffected by ads.
The trivialization and pornographic attitude towards sex in advertising is critiqued, showing a shift towards more explicit content.
The speaker discusses the normalization of sexual violence in advertising, which creates a climate of danger for women and girls.
The sexualization of young girls and boys in advertising is highlighted, with products and messages that encourage inappropriate behavior.
The speaker calls for media literacy and political action to combat the negative effects of advertising on self-esteem and body image.
The importance of an educated and aware public in challenging harmful advertising images is stressed.
The speaker shares hope for change, inspired by young activists and organizations working to improve media representation.
The need for profound and global changes in advertising to create a better world for future generations is emphasized.
The speaker concludes with a call to action for citizens to prioritize their role as societal members over consumers in shaping media messages.
Transcripts
I started collecting us and talking
about the image of women in advertising
in the late 1960s as far as I know I was
the first person to do this I tore as
out of magazines put them on my
refrigerator and gradually I began to
see a pattern in the as a kind of
statement about what it meant to be a
woman in the culture I put together a
slide presentation and began traveling
around the country in 1979 I made my
first film killing us softly
advertising's image of women which I
have remade three times since then these
are some of the ads in my original
collection a long time ago feminine odor
is everyone's problem if your hair isn't
beautiful the rest hardly matters honey
your antiperspirant spray just doesn't
do it and I'd probably never be married
now if I hadn't lost 49 pounds which one
woman told me was the best of harassment
for fact she had ever seen I'm gonna do
a very abbreviated version of this talk
of course today but I want to begin with
the question that I most often get asked
which is how did you get into this what
got you started many factors in my life
led to this interest I became active in
the second wave of the women's movement
right away in the late 1960s I worked in
media I spent a year in London working
for the British Broadcasting Corporation
and a year in Paris working for a French
film company this sounds much more
glamorous than it was I was a secretary
in those days options for women were
very limited I was a secretary I was a
waitress but I did have one other option
that I rarely talked about I was
encouraged to enter beauty pageants and
to model this is artfully cropped to
make it look as if I won I was in fact
the runner-up this was my first ad and I
think the car tells you something about
how long ago this was
and this ran in a London newspaper so
modeling was one of the very few ways
that a woman could make money in those
days it was very seductive but for me it
was also alienating it was soul
destroying there was a whole lot of
sexual harassment that came with the
territory so I didn't follow that path
but it left me with a lifelong interest
in the whole idea of beauty and the
power of the image
since that time Africa housing has
become much more widespread powerful and
sophisticated than ever before babies at
the age of six months can recognise
corporate logos and that's the age at
which were marketers are now starting to
target our children at the same time
just about everyone feels personally
exempt from the influence of advertising
so wherever I go what I hear more than
anything else is oh I don't pay
attention to as I just tune them out
they have no effect on me I hear this
most often from people wearing
Abercrombie t-shirts but that's another
story the ads are the influence of
advertising is quick cumulative and for
the most part subconscious ads sell more
than products now in many ways we've
obviously come a long way but from my
perspective of over 40 years the image
of women in advertising is worse than
ever the pressure on women to be young
thin beautiful is more intense than ever
before it's always been impossible years
ago the supermodel Cindy Crawford said I
wish I looked like Cindy Crawford she
couldn't of course no one can look like
this but it's really impossible today
because of the magic of Photoshop which
can turn this woman into this woman and
then try to make us believe that an
anti-aging cream can do this now she's a
beautiful woman but older women are
considered attractive in our culture
only insofar as we stay looking
impossibly young we learned to read
men's and women's faces very differently
here we have Brad Pitt and former
supermodel Linda Evangelista about the
same age each one of them in an ad for
Chanel but he gets to look like a human
being and she's transformed into a
cartoon now sometimes every now and
a celebrity resists and as you may know
just this week Lord sent out a tweet
with an unretouched photograph below the
Photoshop version and she tweeted
remember flaws are okay good for her
but this doesn't happen very often men
are photoshopped too but when men are
photoshopped they're made bigger Andy
Roddick left when he saw the bulked up
arms on this cover photo and suggests
that they should be returned to the man
they belong to the obsession with
thinness is worse than ever because of
Photoshop her head is bigger than her
pelvis this is an anatomical
impossibility the actual model for this
ad was fired for being too fat and they
used Photoshop to create this freakish
image more recently they use Photoshop
to remove the dreaded thigh gap
unfortunately they also removed a very
important part of her body so the image
is impossible for everyone but
particularly for women of color who are
considered beautiful only insofar as
they resemble the white ideal light
skinned straight hair Caucasian features
round eyes even Beyonce's skin is
lightened in us the image isn't real
it's artificial it's constructed it's
impossible but real women and girls
measure ourselves against it every
single day of course it affects female
self-esteem and it affects how men feel
about the very real women in their lives
women's bodies are dismembered and as an
ad after ad for all kinds of products
and sometimes the body is not only
dismembered
it's insulted as in this amazing ad that
ran quite a few years ago in a lot of
women and teen magazines this is the
whole ad and I'll read you the copy your
press may be too big too saggy too Peart
too flat too full too far apart too
close together to a cup too lopsided too
jiggly too pale too padded too pointy to
pendulous or just to mosquito bites but
with depth styling products that means
you can have your hair the way you want
it
it is ludicrous but this ran in teen
magazines teen magazines target
twelve-year-old girls here they're
saying to 12 year olds your breasts will
never be okay so our girls are getting
the message today so young that they
have to be incredibly thin and beautiful
and hot and sexy and that they're going
to fail because there's no way to
measure up to this impossible ideal the
self-esteem of girls in America often
plummets when they reach adolescence
girls tend to feel fine about themselves
when they're 8 9 10 years old but they
hit adolescence when they often hit a
wall and certainly part of this wall is
this terrible emphasis on physical
perfection men's bodies are very rarely
dismembered in us more than they used to
be but still it tends to come as a shock
this ad ran about 20 years ago in Vanity
Fair these are all from the national
mainstream media and it was one of the
first examples of turning men into sex
objects but when this ad ran about 20
years ago the ad was so shocking that
the ad itself got national media
coverage it's a good thing I've got some
coverage I suppose reporters called me
up from all around the country and said
look they're doing the same thing to men
they've always done to women well not
quite
they'd be doing the same thing to men
they've always done to women if there
were copy with this ads that went like
this
your penis may be too small to limp to
limp dick droopy too lopsided too narrow
too fat too pale too pointy too blunt or
just 2 inches
but at least you can have a great pair
of jeans it would never happen nor
should it and believe me this is not the
kind of equality I'm fighting for I
don't want them to do this to men
anymore than to women but I think we can
learn something from these two as one of
which did happen one of which never
would and what they show us very vividly
is that men and women and have it very
different worlds men basically don't
live in a world in which they're well
let me move on to another there are
Serie types that are men of course but
they tend to be less personal less
related to the body however men are
objectified more than they used to be
but there really aren't consequences as
a result of that men don't live in a
world in which they're likely to be
raped harassed or beaten at least
straight white men don't live in such a
world whereas women and girls do when
women are objectified there's always the
threat of sexual violence there's always
intimidation there's always the
possibility of danger and women live in
a world defined by that threat whereas
men simply do not the body language of
women and girls remains passive
vulnerable submissive and very different
from the body language of men and boys
and probably the best way to illustrate
that is to put a man in a traditionally
feminine pose it becomes obviously
trivializing and absurd grown women are
often infantilizing as and increasingly
little girls are sexualized now I've
been talking about this for decades I
wrote a book about it and it's getting
worse this little girl is nine and this
is happening in a culture in which
there's widespread sexual abuse of
children images like this don't cause
this problem but they certainly
normalize very dangerous attitudes
towards children padded bras and thongs
panties are sold for seven-year-olds in
major department stores and the latest
product high heels for babies not to
leave boys out you can get t-shirts for
your toddlers that say things like pimp
squad so boys are sexualized too
although in a very different way than
girls boys are encouraged to look at
girl
the sex objects boys are encouraged to
be sexually precocious and boys are
learned to be tough and invulnerable
basically starting in infancy basically
we allow our children to be sexualized
but we refuse to educate them about sex
the United States is the only developed
nation in the world that doesn't teach
sex education in its schools but our
kids are getting sex education they're
getting massive doses of it but they're
getting it from advertising that puttan
the media the popular culture this is an
ad for jeans although something seems to
be missing but each one of these as four
major international products major
mainstream media very graphic
the problem isn't sex it's the cultures
pornographic attitude towards sex the
trivialization of sex and nowhere is sex
more trivialized than in advertising
where by definition it is used to sell
everything whatever you're giving him
tonight he'll enjoy it more with rice I
don't think I'm particularly naive but I
haven't figured out yet what the hell
you do with rice you know maybe it's
wild rice one woman shouted out she just
hoped it wasn't Minute Rice so this is
an old out of course and you can say
well sex is always used to sell and
that's true but it's far more graphic
and pornographic today than ever before
and just to illustrate that I'm going to
show you an old ad using this is an old
ad using sex to sell food and here's a
current one Burger King the super 7-inch
or it'll blow your mind away for a
mainstream product as is this one now
all of these images I think are actually
profoundly anti erotic because in
advertising and the popular culture
sexuality belongs only to the young and
beautiful if you're not young and
perfect looking you have no sexuality
and this makes most people feel less
desirable how sexy can a woman feel if
she hates her body the Internet has
given us all easy access to pornography
these days and as porn becomes more
available and acceptable the language
and the images of
horn become mainstream young celebrities
emulate the porn stars and these days
you can get your little girl a pole
dancing doll girls are encouraged to
present themselves as strippers and porn
stars to remove their pubic hair and to
be sexually available while expecting
little or nothing in return and at the
same time they're insulted tastes great
goes down easy as girls learn to
sexualize themselves as they learn that
their sexual behavior will be rewarded
they learn to sexualize themselves to
see themselves as objects these images
cause real harm to real girls and women
girls exposed to sexualized images from
a young age are more prone to eating
disorders depression and low self-esteem
inevitably the objectification leads to
violence and that's become much more
extreme to advertising often normalizes
and trivializes battering sexual assault
and even murder the truth is most men
are not violent overwhelmingly most men
are not violent but many men are afraid
to speak up are afraid to support women
and are afraid to challenge other men
and I have great admiration for those
men who do these ads don't directly
cause violence against women but they
normalize dangerous attitudes and they
create a climate in which women are
often seen as things as objects and
certainly turning a human being into a
thing is almost always the first step
toward justifying violence against that
person and that step is constantly taken
with women and girls so the violence the
abuse is partly the chilling but logical
result of this kind of objectification
so in all these ways things have gotten
worse but in one big way they've gotten
much better I am no longer alone there
are scores of films hundreds of films
and books and organizations like The
Brave Girls Alliance which recently had
a great event in Times Square media
literacy is being taught in our schools
there's political action taking place
around the world and I have an extensive
resource list on my website that lists
lots of these thing
I'm inspired by young activists like
Julia Bloom who at the age of 14
launched a petition to Seventeen
magazine asking them to limit their use
of Photoshop and she succeeded here
she's celebrating with some of her
allies and inspired other girls to do
the same this generation gives me hope
but we have a long way to go the changes
will have to be profound and global and
they'll depend upon and aware active
educated public people who think of
themselves primarily as citizens rather
than primarily as consumers we are all
affected by these images we all have a
profound stake in challenging them we
must create a better world for ourselves
and our children after all these years I
still have hope that we will thank you
so much
[Applause]
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