by Alivia Ogle, Reporter

This year’s Spring Arts and Culture Festival at Northwest Arkansas Community College, featured a recorded speech by public speaker, writer and activist Jean Kilbourne. To reflect on the theme of embodiment, “Killing Us Softly” is about the image of women in advertising and how it unconsciously changes the standards of how women should be across the world but mostly in the United States. NWACC’s annual festival is a week-long event and holds over 30 different activities that are held in-person or virtually. SACF brings artists, academics, and the Northwest Arkansas community together to reflect on a certain theme. “Killing Us Softly” part 4, is available all through SACF in NWACC’s library website.

In “Killing Us Softly,” Jean Kilbourne opens people’s eyes with visuals of real ads over time that express how women are defined by advertising. By showing examples of different advertisements, Kilbourne shows how advertising pushes ideals of femininity and pieces together unrealistic women with the technology of Photoshop. Over decades of this stereotypical advertisements, women are belittled by unhealthy perceptions of perfection. These ads unconsciously encourage violence against women, eating disorders, and addiction for women who can never measure up, unless you buy the advertised product then you will be just as perfect, flawless, and unrealistic.

Starting in the 1960s, Kilbourne has been collecting and paying attention to advertisements because her involvement in women’s movements, her interest in media and her experiences as a model. With a collage of ads on her fridge, she started to notice a pattern, a statement, of women in this culture. From slides to a presentation, Kilbourne made her first film in 1979, “Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women.” In 1987 she remade the film as “Still Killing Us Softly” and remade the film again in 2000 as “Killing Us Softly 3,” and again now as “Killing Us Softly 4.” For more than 40 years, Kilbourne has noticed and spoke out about advertiser’s narrative towards women and although more people are invested in making a change, she believes this narrative against women has gotten worse. 

Kilbourne quoted the editor in chief of Advertising Age, the major publication of the advertising industry, said, “Only 8% of an ad’s message is received by the conscious mind. The rest is worked and reworked deep within the recesses of the brain.”

Advertisements seem to be everywhere: buildings, cars, billboards, buses and bus stops, airplanes, food, etc.. Ads sell more than just products, they sell values, sexuality, success, and concepts of love. They tell us who we are and who we should be. Advertising tells women that the should worry most about how they look. Women are told by ads that their acceptable if they are only young, thin, white or light skinned, perfectly groomed, shaved, innocent yet sexy. Kilbourne says women of color are generally considered beautiful only if they have light skin, straight hair, and Caucasian features. Black women are often featured in the jungle with clothes from the skins of animals as if they were exotic animals. 

“Just as it’s difficult to be healthy in a toxic physical environment, if we’re breathing poisoned air or drinking polluted water, it’s difficult to be healthy in a ‘toxic cultural environment’ that surrounds us with unhealthy images and constantly sacrifices our health and well-being for the sake of profit,” Kilbourne said.

In different advertisements, women’s bodies are dismembered or shaped into objects. Kilbourne believes this objectification created a climate of widespread violence against women. Men really don’t live in a world where their bodies are routinely criticized and judged. Girls and women are posed covering their mouths or having passive, vulnerable body language compared to ads of men and boys. Kilbourne believes the sexualization of little girls in advertisements has had some factor to the United States having the highest rate in teen pregnancy and highest rates of sexual transmitted diseases, compared to the rest of the world. Sex in ads are misogynistic and rarely show any other narratives unless its being targeted. Kilbourne says there is nothing wrong with wanting to be attractive and sexy, what’s wrong is this narrative is emphasized for girls and women to the extent of dismissing other qualities to a person. Being “hot” has been pushed to become the most important factor to be successful which leads to most women feeling insecure, vulnerable and much less sexy. In 2007, the American Psychological Association released a report concluding that girls exposed to sexual advertising at a young age are more prone to depression, eating disorders, and low self-esteem. 

Emma Reed who is majoring in art at NWACC, said she thinks people don’t notice these narratives until they are noticed; then, it’s hard to avoid. 

“Not only does it change everyone’s minds and how they see people’s bodies but it also makes everything oversexualized. It makes the younger generation think it’s ok to just show off your body all the time and be sexual, its gross,” Reed said. 

These advertisements give mixed messages to young women on how they should be sexy but innocent, experienced but virginal. Sexual images in advertising are not intend to push sex but to push consumption on their products in the ads. Not only are theses models objectified buy the products themselves are sexualized. Kilbourne believes the world of advertisements should have a lot of citizen activism, educations and media literacy. People should think of themselves as people rather than just consumers.