Kilbourne Reader Response

In the article "Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt: Advertising and Violence", the author, Jean Kilbourne, describes how advertising affects both men and women consciously and unconsciously. The article focuses mainly on direct examples of advertisements that portray women in a submissive manner and men in a dominant one. She argues that these ads cause men and women in our society to take on the roles displayed in them. The author is clearly against sexualization in advertising in its entirety because she gives examples of both men and women being portrayed suggestively and finds it abhorrent either way. She feels that our society needs to break our notions regarding gender roles and that we are on the path to doing that in many aspects of our cultural, but that advertisements are one place that this is not happening and it is also reinforcing myths and breeding a culture of violence that she wants removed.

Kilbourne feels that it is dangerous to depict men and women as sex objects because it dehumanizes them. If somebody views somebody else not as a person but as an object it makes violence towards them more acceptable, and, as she says, "inevitable". She uses such examples as homophobia and racism to make her point, "We see this with racism, with homophobia. The person becomes an object and violence is inevitable" (428-429). Kilbourne says that objectification of women is more dangerous than of men because statistics show that it leads to violence against them. This violence is in the form of verbal abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, along with others. I agree that objectification of women is more troubling because of this direct link to violence.

Although I agreed with her argument, the tone of the essay threw me off. The author seemed very stubborn, albeit persuasive, in her argument. She didn't bring in any counter examples to refute, which made me notice that it was very one sided. I would have also liked for her to try to tie it into a bigger picture, linking the evolution of advertising and how that has turned into a business built around objectifying women. There wasn't that much historical context given in the article either. I did like that fact that she gave examples of violence against women now, I just wish she had talked about the whole history of why the system is the way it is. Without giving historical context the readers are left with an incomplete story. The article feels like a movie that you started watching half way through, you don't know the ending, but you don't know the beginning either.

The author also didn't give any solutions to the bigger issues. She obviously feels that objectification should be taken out of advertising, which I agree with, but she fails to mention how as a society we can rid our culture of the notions we have about gender. This article shows a very narrow slice of the picture which I wish could have been turned into a full idea instead of just a look at advertising and how that affects women.