...called "exotic-looking" 3 times. Once by a white man. Another time by a Cuban woman. And another time by a family friend. All three occasions were on the premise of it being a compliment, which I had taken it as. Despite this, however, I couldn't help but to question the reasons behind which they thought I looked "exotic" as well as what they would identify as "exotic". The term "exotic" in the world of beauty has been considered done for the term to use for any women of a darker complexion than the conventional standard of pale skin that the vast majority of models take up. Jean Kilbourne, activist and cultural theorist, had brought attention to this aspect in the advertisement industry as she explained how women of color are a minority in the modeling industry yet when they are placed in ads, they are placed alongside words like "exotic". This comes to hit upon the objectification of women that Kilbourne has spent her career educating people on. Women of color also have been shown in her extensive examples of ads to have been portrayed with animal prints or just animalistic features that further degrade them to the point of not being completely human. This implicitly states that to call a woman exotic is implying that she is being viewed as an unusual creature that excites the visual senses of others. It seems that the term "exotic" has come to be associated with women of color as...
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...In Jean Kilbourne’s essay “Jesus is a Brand of Jeans,”(000) she poses the idea that advertising has disrupted the emotional integrity of today’s society. She does so by examining the general attitude of society’s view of advertising while exposing its harsh effects on our personal relationships. This concept is expressed in her statement, “After all, it is easier to love a product than a person” (pg. 257, par. 4). The article goes on to describe how materialism has become a staple in our culture today. Jean Kilbourne’s purpose is simple: expose the harmful emotional effects of advertising on the general public to inspire us to break away from senseless materialism. By recognizing how advertisers are working our own human desires against us,...
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...on Gender Jean Kilbourne, the author of “Two ways a Woman Can Get Hurt”, argues in her piece that advertising affects us in very profound and potentially damaging ways. She begins to explain to us about complex relationships between ads and human behavior that we may never have even realized. In her article, Jean Kilbourne addresses many ways in which a woman is hurt, both mentally and physically, through advertising and ads that could seem to be harmless to most. Kilbourn claims that ads and advertisements that sell a product are also encouraging negative behavior from men toward women. Also, ads with women who are dressed provocatively are only brainwashing girls to believe that the only way to get a mans attention is through dressing the same way or acting a certain way that in reality is not acceptable. These ads mentally hurt women to the point that they believe they aren't good enough or a certain way of living is okay. According to Kilbourne it is dangerous to depict women and men as sex objects because once a human is turned into an object it justifies violence against that person. She believes the objectification of women is more troubling than men because there is very little risk for men where as women are always at risk. "When men objectify women, they do so in a cultural context in which women are constantly objectified and in which there are consequences-from economic discrimination to violence" (588). Trends in advertising to objectify women tend to...
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...Cologne Business School (CBS) Beauty in the advertising industry Term Paper in Media Management Summer Semester 2012 Lecturer: Jana Baum Christin Schwarzhoff BA11 International Culture and Management / Media Management Student-Nr.: 1.6 11 306 Table of content 1. Introduction 3 2. Effects of Advertisings on Women 2.1 Dissatisfaction with the body shape 4 2. Statistics and surveys 5 3. The Image of a Woman in the Beauty Industry 3.1 Gender display in commercials 6 2. Criticism of advertising and thoughts about solutions 7 4. Dove Campaign 4.1 Campaign for Real Beauty 8 4.2 Dove ‘Evolution’ 9 4.3 Success of Dove Campaign 9 5. Conclusion 10 6. Bibliography 11 7. Declaration 13 1. Introduction The term paper at hand deals with the beauty in the commercial industry. Looking at commercials in magazines, on billboards or on television, it is recognizable that most of these advertisings use the image of a perfect world. Especially in beauty advertisings beautiful flawless women present products promising the consumer to look as beautiful as the model after using them. But how effective are these advertisings and how do they affect society? This term paper will discuss the negative influence of those commercials on women in today’s society. Furthermore it will figure out whether a television commercial with a realistic understanding of beauty can be successful in a consumer-based...
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...Killing Us Softly: Advertising's Image of Women was a video of the speech by Jean Kilbourne. Jean Kilbourne spoke on how the media portrays women in an unnatural way and the differences on how they portray men vs. women. I attended this event to meet the intellectual experience and viewed it as something I just had to do and get it over with. This event was more enjoyable than I originally thought it would be. The event started at four o'clock, so I went straight there after my biology class had ended. Angelika Hoelger, the professor who held the event, had just pushed play as I was walking into the room. It wasn't hard to find a seat since there were only six or seven other people who attended the event. Attendees were given a t-shirt and a survey on the event. The survey asked questions, such as: what you learned, if you had been to any common experience events before, and if enjoyed it....
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...Jean Kilbourne’s view on women in advertising is very inspiring in promoting equality to all. Yes, women are objectified and seen as vulnerable and weak but, women are still strong individuals who only want equality, similar to men. Women are as able, strong, and powerful like men. Both men and women ares always on magazine covers, billboard ads, logos, commercials and many other modes of advertising, but Kilbourne opened a closed door to where she explained that women are being “objectified”. We are not being glorified but rather, seen as vulnerable things that men just use. For example, in different alcohol brands women’s bodies are always turned into things, and in some editorials, women’s bodies are mocked. In addition, there are also ads...
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...a passive mirror of society, advertising is an effective and pervasive medium of influence and persuasion, and its influence is cumulative, often subtle, and primarily unconscious [….] It is both creator and perpetuator of the dominant attitudes, values, and ideology of the culture, the social norms and myths by which most people govern their behavior. At the very least, advertising helps to create a climate in which certain attitudes and values flourish and others are not reflected at all. (Kilbourne 120-21) As Jean Kilbourne notes in her article “’In Your Face . . . All Over the Place’: Advertising Is Our Environment,” advertising serves as a form of mediation that not only presents us with products and information, but also influences our behavior, our beliefs, and our choices. For this assignment, you will work to understand the messages advertisements send by analyzing an advertisement of your choice, keeping in mind the ploys that advertisers use to manipulate and exploit consumers. The important question here, as Kilbourne says, is not ‘Does this ad sell the product?,’ but rather ‘What else does this ad sell?’. For this assignment, you will select one advertisement from a newspaper, magazine, or website that contains graphics and written text and analyze it according to the criteria that follow. Your reading of the assigned essays for this unit, our class discussion and activities, and your own personal experience with advertising will aid you in this assignment...
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...a marketing instrument in a wide range of firms’ activities. Women appear as a sexual object in any kind of advertisement or as an attractive material standing nearby a product. Sometimes firms use sexual saleswomen to facilitate the sale or to attract consumers’ attention to the firm or product. Particularly, it is very common to use sexually attractive women in advertisements regardless of the product is related to sexuality. The use of sexual women images in advertisements is so widespread that such images are found in the advertisements for most product types from clothing, cosmetics, jewelries and furnitures. For over twenty years, Jean Kilbourne has been writing, lecturing, and making films about how advertising affects women and girls. In her essay, Kilbourne looks very deep into the connection between abuse and ads....
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...this newest update of her Killing Us Softly series, Jean Kilbourne takes a look at how distorted and destructive ideals of femininity are. The film shows a range of new print and television advertisements to lay a pattern of damaging gender stereotypes, images and messages that too often reinforce unrealistic, and unhealthy, perceptions of beauty, perfection, and sexuality. Killing Us Softly 4 challenges viewers to take advertising seriously, and to think critically about popular culture and its relationship to sexism, eating disorders, and gender violence. Ads portray models and celebrities as being flawless, and as having perfect looks. Being human women want this and think that if they can just lose weight then they’ll be happy. All women want is to be like the people they idolize, yet that is the one thing anyone can never truly have, because no matter how we morph or change our bodies we will never be perfect. Some celebrities are speaking out about the deceptiveness of the media. Supermodel Cindy Crawford, considered one of the world’s most beautiful women, released a statement saying, “‘ I wish like I looked like Cindy Crawford’”(Kilbourne movie). Fortunately she’s not the only one addressing the misconception of the media. Winslet spoke out against a magazine stating, “‘I don’t look like that, and I don’t desire to look like that, I can tell you that they’ve reduced the size of my legs by about a third’” (Kilbourne movie). The media doesn’t show us reality; it shows us...
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...Jennifer Archuleta Professor Musgrave English 205 December 13, 2011 The Effects of Media on Body Image Imagine growing up in a modern day society. Everywhere you look there are images of beauty, representations of how beautiful people are supposed to look; flawless and thin. You grow up believing that this unattainable image is the only image of beauty. As you look in the mirror and see only flaws in your reflection, you rack your brain of ways to make yourself more beautiful. This becomes your obsession. Your dream is to become a model, but in the very start of your career, a fashion agent tells you that you will have to lose ten pounds in order to find work. This was the beginning of the end for former model and actress Isabelle Caro, just one of the many women affected by the media industry and the negative effects it has on body image. With Isabelle’s obsession to be thin, she battled with anorexia until it ended her life at the young age of twenty seven. In modern culture, a great deal of importance is placed on our looks and body image. This is portrayed by the media through magazine pictures, television advertisements, billboards, and the influence of models and actresses. Although the media affects both men and women, I will be showing how it specifically affects the behaviors, viewpoints, and attitudes of women. The media portrays a beautiful woman as being someone who is thin and flawless. Photographs of models that are posted in magazines are brushed-up, touched-up...
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...Chal Crawford English 101/820 09 November, 2010 Assignment: Persuasion Paper Medias affect on Body Image Images of female bodies are everywhere. Women and their body parts sell everything from food to cars. Popular film and television actresses are becoming younger, taller and thinner. Women’s magazines are full of articles urging that if they can just lose those last twenty pounds, they’ll have it all the perfect marriage, loving children, great sex, and a rewarding career Why are standards of beauty being imposed on women? The roots are economic, by presenting an ideal difficult to achieve and maintain the cosmetic and diet product industries are assured of growth and profits. Take Kristen of River Edge, New Jersey, just like most girls at the age of 15 “she started to develop curves; she was disappointed that breasts did not follow” (Sweeney). Girls rose in a culture of celebrity obsession and makeover TV shows believe that a “shapely bust line” and a thin body will let them have it all. Women who are insecure about their bodies are more likely to invest in beauty products, new clothes, diet aids, and plastic surgery. It is estimated that the diet industry alone is worth 40 to 100 billion a year selling temporary weight loss, 90 to 95% of dieters regain the lost weight (BBC). American Society for Aesthetic Plastic surgery shows that the number of operations performed on 18 or younger have more than tripled over a 10 year period from 59,890 in 1997 to 205,119 in 2007...
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...Sociology of Gender Gender is defined as the social distinctions between masculinity and femininity. People often use the terms gender and sex interchangeably. The former is defined above, whereas the latter is defined as a determination of male or female on the basis of a set of socially agreed-upon biological criteria. Music Videos such as Stupid Girls and If I Were A Boy by singers Pink and Beyonce respectively demonstrate clearly the assumptions or categorizations we evoke simply by using the terms girl or boy. Although the topic of gender in sociology is vast, this paper focuses on how gender is reproduced and how the gendered body is displayed in society. There are three ways in which gender is reproduced in society. It is reproduced through the family, education and the media. From birth begins gendered expectations. According to the social norm, the color pink is mainly associated as a feminine color and the color blue masculine. Family and friends who go to see the birth of a baby girl fill the hospital room with pink balloons, teddy bears with pink ribbons and if a boy was born the room would be filled with presents which are blue in color. Growing up, girls receive presents such dollhouses and kitchen sets which reinforce their femininity. Parents raise their boys and girls differently. Even though research shows that boys at an early age (around 2 years) are just as interested in playing with the same toys girls play...
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...“The biggest weasel word used in advertising doublespeak is ‘Help.’ Now ‘help’ only means to aid or assist, nothing more… But once the ad says ‘help’ it can say just about anything after that because ‘help’ qualifies everything coming after it” (Lutz 162). The bold heading in blue letters next to Flo says “Too many discounts? No such thing.” Under the heading, she gives an explanation of different ways to “help” you save and also talks about how being a safe driver, paying in full, or just going paperless can get you amazing discounts such as $500 in savings just by switching to Progressive! Notice how the ad says that by switching to Progressive can save you money, instead of saying switching Progressive will save you money. Fine print is in the lower right hand corner is what appears to be terms and agreements. This reads, “Insurance prices and products different when purchased directly from Progressive or through independent agents/brokers. All discounts not available in all states. National average annual car insurance saving by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive in 2013. Basically the fine print is saying that yes, Progressive can save you money, but it cannot guarantee you ‘$500’ and it will depend on where you live and if you are buying through Progressive directly, or an independent...
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...Our world is focused on the fact that sex sells and advertisements sometimes use that to get the product noticed. Even some companies try to make advertisements more popular by putting a girl half naked on the cover. Advertisements can gender stereotype by exploiting women’s bodies, demining women’s intelligence and portraying women in roles that they are “supposed to carry out.” Everyone in the world was made differently for a reason, so why is our society trying so hard to make people think we should all be perfect? Not everyone is going to look like a model and there is nothing wrong with that. Jean Kilbourne a social theorist says that, “While an average American sees three thousand advertisements per day they are subjected to seeing the image of a beautiful, thin, long legged, model.” Making women believe they should all look like that model. All types of advertising are used, such as billboards and magazines for beer or car advertisements, and a...
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...Women are not objects, yet for some reason today this idea is slowly fading away. Jean Kilbourne,opponent for images of women in ads, describes how advertising has escalated to a point where bodies are no longer respected, but rather portrayed as objects especially individuals of the female gender.The ad portrays a naked female covered in cream in a bedroom setting ,and a naked male covered in shower gel taking a shower both in same position.The ad for “axe shower gel” overtly makes it clear that women are being portrayed as a sexual objects, thus correlating to Kilbourne’s idea that ads are normalizing the ideals of sexual aggression.Axe leads the viewer to think that they will go to bed with a superficial girl by the use of parallelism between the woman and man, typography and contrast of clean vs dirty, and the different backgrounds being in the shower versus the bedroom....
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