MEDIA EDUCATION FOUNDATION Challenging media STUDY GUIDE KILLING US SOFTLY 3 ADVERTISING’S IMAGE OF WOMEN | FEATURING JEAN KILBOURNE Written by Kendra Hodgson Edited by Jeremy Earp (c) 2005 Media Education Foundation | 60 Masonic St. | Northampton, MA 01060 | 1.800.897.0089 | www.mediaed.org This study guide may be reproduced in whole or in part for non-profit, educational uses only. CONTENTS KILLING US SOFTLY 3 ADVERTISING’S IMAGE OF WOMEN | FEATURING JEAN KILBOURNE SYNOPSIS & KEY POINTS...................................................................................................................................................................pg. 02 USING THE VIDEO IN THE CLASSROOM............................................................................................................................................05 BODY IMAGE & ISSUES IN THE CLASSROOM..................................................................................................................................06 THE MEDIA LITERACY CIRCLE OF EMPOWERMENT....................................................................................................................07 PRE-VIEWING ACTIVITIES.........................................................................................................................................................................08 POST-VIEWING DISCUSSION QUESTIONS.......................................................................................................................................12 SECTION INTRODUCTIONS & EXERCISES Introduction.....................................................................................................................................................................................................15 Objectification................................................................................................................................................................................................16 Dismemberment...........................................................................................................................................................................................18 The Obsession with Thinness................................................................................................................................................................19 Food & Advertising.......................................................................................................................................................................................21 Woman vs. Woman.......................................................................................................................................................................................22 Silencing: Does her Voice Matter?........................................................................................................................................................23 The Trivialization of Power.......................................................................................................................................................................24 The Sexualization of Teenagers............................................................................................................................................................25 Ageism in Advertising................................................................................................................................................................................26 Violence Against Women.........................................................................................................................................................................27 Is it Intentional?..............................................................................................................................................................................................31 WRITING EXERCISES....................................................................................................................................................................................33 ADVOCACY & ACTIVISM ACTIVITIES..................................................................................................................................................35 (c) 2005 Media Education Foundation | 60 Masonic St. | Northampton, MA 01060 | 1.800.897.0089 | www.mediaed.org This study guide may be reproduced in whole or in part for non-profit, educational uses only. SYNOPSIS & KEY POINTS In Killing Us Softly 3,the newest version of her groundbreaking video Killing Us Softly (CDF-1979), Jean Kilbourne surveys the contemporary advertising landscape to critically examine how, why and to what effect corporations and their advertisers use images of girls and women to sell their products. Deconstructing advertisements with the same kind of care and thought that went into constructing them, Kilbourne pushes the discussion of media and advertising beyond the realm of pure market values on the one hand, and pure aesthetic values on the other. She sets mass media images of femininity against social reality, advertising fantasy against the actual experience of girls and women, and encourages us to consider the relationship between the stories advertising tells about girls and women and the actual lives girls and women lead. One of Kilbourne’s underlying arguments is that advertising, as perhaps the primary storyteller in American culture, has the capacity to both produce and affirm the very fictions about women’s desires and identity that advertisers themselves often claim to be innocently tapping into and reflecting back at the public. In keeping with the industry’s own self-stated mission to create the markets they pitch to, she argues that there is little that is natural, inevitable or innocent about the stories advertising tells us about women, that cultural standards of “femininity” are less given than made, and that in terms of sheer money, power and cultural presence, the maker that matters most is advertising itself. By showing how and why advertising takes agency away from women, Kilbourne therefore puts the focus on the agency of advertisers. She uncovers a distinctive and pervasive pattern to the deliberate choices the industry makes, tactical decisions designed to sell their particular brands by selling particular brands of femininity. Her baseline point is that these choices produce casualties in the world beyond advertising – that advertising simultaneously reflects, exacerbates and exploits deep-seated personal and social anxieties about femininity, masculinity and this country’s continued ambivalence about shifting gender roles – undermining the way girls and women see themselves, while normalizing the violence done to them by men. Kilbourne’s analysis of advertising fiction and fantasy unfolds against the backdrop of this disturbing reality: » Boys and men rape girls and women somewhere in the United States every 2 minutes. 1 » More women are injured from being battered by men than by all rapes, muggings and automobile crashes combined. 2 » 30% of women murdered in the U.S. are murdered by their husbands, ex-husbands or boyfriends. 3 » 81% of ten year olds are afraid of being fat. 4 » Forty-five percent of American women are on a diet on any given day. 5 » Nearly half of all Americans know someone with an eating disorder. 6 With an eye on these facts, Kilbourne looks behind the speed, sensation and cool veneer of contemporary advertising and uncovers the following: »A mass-media fantasy world populated by carefully crafted and highly restrictive models of femininity. » A world in which images of girls and women often project the illusion of female power and agency while at the same time subtly subverting them. 1. U.S. Dept. of Justice, March 1998 2. Stark, E. and Fliterart, A. “Medical Therapy as Repression: The Case of Battered Women,” Health and Medicine. Summer/Fall (1982), 29-32. 3. Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey, August 1995. 4. Statistics: Eating Disorders and Their Precursors" (http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org) 5. ibid 6. So. Carolina Dept. of Mental Health Eating Disorder Statistics (http://www.state.sc.us/dmh/anorexia/statistics.htm) (c) 2005 Media Education Foundation | 60 Masonic St. | Northampton, MA 01060 | 1.800.897.0089 | www.mediaed.org 02 This study guide may be reproduced in whole or in part for non-profit, educational uses only. SYNOPSIS & KEY POINTS » A widening cultural space in which aesthetic codes and ideals of femininity turn men’s violence against women into art, and women against their own bodies. » An arena of impossible ideals that derives its power from cyclically feeding and feeding off of reactionary attitudes toward women. » A repetitious image system that normalizes sexism and men’s violence against women even as, and perhaps because, American women continue to struggle and make progress despite these daily social realities. » A place where pervasive images of men’s violence against women, along with passive, vulnerable and dehumanized images of women themselves, conspire to reinforce the culture’s casual attitudes toward domestic violence and rape. » A showcase of so-called “cutting-edge” advertising techniques that continue to thrive on old ideas, including the objectification and dismemberment of women’s bodies, the cult of thinness, the co- optation of feminism and women’s equality, the infantilization of women, the sexualization of children