Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising's Image of Women [Trailer] - Available on DVD

Correction: This video contains the image of Giselle Bundchen incorrectly identified as Ana Carolina Reston. An updated video is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWKXit...

http://www.mediaed.org

In this new, highly anticipated update of her pioneering Killing Us Softly series, the first in more than a decade, Jean Kilbourne takes a fresh look at how advertising traffics in distorted and destructive ideals of femininity. The film marshals a range of new print and television advertisements to lay bare a stunning pattern of damaging gender stereotypes -- images and messages that too often reinforce unrealistic, and unhealthy, perceptions of beauty, perfection, and sexuality. By bringing Kilbourne's groundbreaking analysis up to date, Killing Us Softly 4 stands to challenge a new generation of students to take advertising seriously, and to think critically about popular culture and its relationship to sexism, eating disorders, and gender violence.

Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D. is internationally recognized for her groundbreaking work on the image of women in advertising and for her critical studies of alcohol and tobacco advertising. In the late 1960s she began her exploration of the connection between advertising and several public health issues, including violence against women, eating disorders, and addiction, and launched a movement to promote media literacy as a way to prevent these problems. A radical and original idea at the time, this approach is now mainstream and an integral part of most prevention programs. Her films, lectures and television appearances have been seen by millions of people throughout the world. Kilbourne was named by The New York Times Magazine as one of the three most popular speakers on college campuses. She is the creator of the renowned Killing Us Softly: Advertising's Image of Women film series and the author of the award-winning book Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel and co-author of So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids.

• Category

  Education

[imfantasyparade]

Also I think you've confused women sexualizing themselves with women "objectifying" themselves. There's a huge difference. No woman wants to be objectified (be stripped of her personhood) and that's not what she's trying to accomplish when she's dressing up.

[Sasha Perard]

"girls are getting this message really young; that they need to be hot, sexy..."

*resumes to show images of white women*

does this not discomfort anyone? no, i don't want the objectification and over-sexualization for any woman of any colour, but why is it that the common representation of a sexy woman is a white woman? what does that do to women of color if the ideal we are shown since birth is the white woman being the ideal?

[dave4248]

Tell ya what gals. Let's trade places. From now on....commercials will sexualize, and objectify men, and WOMEN will get to play the moronic, lazy, illiterate, brainless, fat buffoon (like men do in ads now) What's wrong? You don't like that trade? Can't blame ya.

[MrsAustraliana]

The main problem is...when you hear or see something often enough (and we all know that advertising is a constant part of modern life) you start to believe it even if you don't realise it... how many people buy takeaway too often to be healthy...not because they love it (even tho I'm sure they do) but because they see it everywhere...and it always looks so fresh

[AllTimeIsRelative]

I'm not being naive, I'm just questioning the possibility that it may have developed from an accident in advertising which triggered decades making women think they should look a certain way. I realise it is now, presently, done on purpose.

[swedennemesis]

At 2:10 in this clip. You choose to let this affect you or not. You choose!!!

The advertice doesnt push this down your throat. Noone hold you to gunpoint and threaten your life to adept this "belief"...You chose to think like this. You chose to watch it, take it in, let it hinder you, you chose to let this make you feel bad.

[Brenda De Jesus]

I'm a victim of society. I won't let my future daughter feel like an object. Save the innocence

[Wallylex]

Do you have ANY idea of how naive you sound?

[Rachael Yates]

I totally hear what she's saying. But at the end of the day, advertisements are just make believe. The day we stop taking them seriously and letting them dictate our self esteem will be the day this nonsense stops.

[Trey Yeoman]

This is one of the best analysis of feminism and its distortion of body images and such :D Great message.

[JayNettieEmm]

Is this speech written in text?