Killing Us Softly – Advertising's Image of Women
A recent report by the United Nations Commission on the status of women claims that: 'advertising is the worst offender in perpetuating the image of women as sex symbols and an inferior class of human being'.
Taking advertisements from magazines, newspapers, album covers and shopfront windows, ‘Killing Us Softly’ presents specific examples of the ways in which advertisements reinforce stereotypes, affect our self-image and how we relate to each other, our concepts of success and worth, love and sexuality, popularity and normality.
Using an intriguing mixture of statistics, humour, insight and outrage, Jean Kilbourne questions how far the use and abuse of women in advertising is connected to the sexual exploitation of women at large and the increasing incidence of child abuse. The film is an excellent resource for classes or discussion groups who want to explore the impact of advertising images on society's view of women.
Ms Kilbourne goes far beyond the pop philosophising of her predecessors to reveal how advertising's messages degrade, trivialize and strait-jacket women.
– James Morrow, Media and Methods
Description source: Circles catalogue (1987). Edited by Jenny Holland and Jane Harris.
