Slim Hopes: Advertising & the Obsession With Thinness

http://www.mediaed.org

Jean Kilbourne's award-winning video offers an in-depth analysis of how female bodies are depicted in advertising images and the devastating effects of those images on women's health. Addressing the relationship between these images and the obsession of girls and women with dieting and thinness, Slim Hopes offers a new way to think about life-threatening eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, and a well-documented critical perspective on the social impact of advertising.

Slim Hopes is a lively and engaging program suitable for a wide range of audiences at high schools, colleges and universities. Using over 150 ads, it informs as it entertains, allowing viewers to build an analytic framework for considering the impact of advertising on women's health.

• Category

  News & Politics

[SweetSweetWaldo]

Who is more likely to perpetrate violent crime upon men? Men or women? There you go. Men commit most of the assault, mayhem, and murder. Period. Since the vast majority of men are heterosexual, females are of course going to be the vast majority of sexual assault victims. Take women out of the equation, such as in prison, and the male-on-male sexual assault stats skyrocket. Men commit most violent crime, like it or lump it. Man-hate? We make ourselves easy targets, don't we?

[nightmathzombieethan]

Men are targetted by advertising just as much as women are, mostly just on different grounds.

Although in terms of physical stature, we are BOTH held to unreasonable standards by advertisers.

Women just seem to be effected by it more since they are also taught that most of their "Worth" lies in their physical appearance. Advertising and marketing is a soul-less game, but ultimately it's the parents who have the responsibility to teach their kids to see past all of this....

[joseph150ish]

Does being a BETA liberal male get you layed much?LMAO:)If you are indeed a guy but theres not much differance is there cupcake.

[mandianful]

Yes SweetSweetWaldo... you certainly live up to your name :)

[sacridias]

Honestly most people weight a lot more than 25 LBS than they did 25 years ago, since anyone under 25 didn't weigh anything :P.

Blind Rhetoric is the anti-reason. Compare two numbers and what you get two numbers without meaning. Weighting 25 lbs more or even 8% less than most women means nothing. In the middle ages people were shorter and weighed less, malnutrition was the leading cause. This is the problem I have with numbers, they have no substance, facts need more meaning.

[sacridias]

Recent research said 90% of all statistics are made up by people that have no clue.

Fact: Most Olympic and professional athletes will have complications later in life due to the strain the put on their body. This fact does not mean that the opposite (being lazy) is good, it is just a data point. Lots of people try to use a single data point to put forward what they believe to be a good idea. A data point is useless without other data points. Red meat is bad for you unless it is good for you.

[Antonio Rodrigues]

recent research said: 90% of models have a good health

[CelebrenIthil]

(cont. again) And that very tall, extremely thin, devoid of (natural) breasts and hips body shape that is being pushed by the media as the ideal to attain, is one of those extremes. It is not given to every woman- far from it if, as Jean tells, it occurs naturally in about only 5%- to ever look like this try as they may. Basic bodily and bone structure can't be changed to reach their ideals no matter how little fat you can take off the frame. Most healthy & thin gals don't get to.

[CelebrenIthil]

(cont.) Look around you, then all around the world, in art and statues from as far as art goes, anatomy books and other documented images of the female body. Standards of beauty, health and wealth has changed with time and societies and is not the same everywhere, and humans in general have gotten taller than in the past (better nutrition/health) but you get a general idea of how the female body looks in general. Most women in the world will be close to this than the extremes.

[CelebrenIthil]

I think what she means with "bodies haven't changed" is that the "default" female anatomy hasn't evolved in a significantly different way during those years. People can get fatter or thinner, but that particular build that implies of being extremely slender and boyish, with virtually no hips and no breasts (tough trust Photoshop, implants and padded bras to hide it) is not a build that occurs naturally in a lot of females. (running out of chars cont. in next post)

[b451cello]

At 2:16 she states that 20 years ago the average model weighed 8% less than the average woman and today there is a 23% body weight difference and then she says, "women's bodies haven't changed". That isn't true. According to Robert Lustig on Sugar the bitter truth, "we all weigh 25 pounds more today than we did 25 years ago" and that's evident. Of course advertising is making us sick, but it works both ways. Our diets backfire and while some get thinner and thinner, some get bigger.