Killing Us Softly 3
Jean Kilbourne (2000)
Film Review
Killing Us Softly 3 is the third Jean Kilbourne documentary on the advertising industry’s destructive effect on women. It updates Killing Us Softly (1979) and Still Killing us Softly (1987). It’s presented in lecture format, illustrated by dozens of ad images.
The majority of Americans deny being influenced by advertising. Kilbourne challenges this. Modern advertising deliberately targets the unconscious. Ads are everywhere, continuously surrounding us with unconscious messaging about values and attitudes, as well as products.
Advertising has a massive impact on the way women think about themselves and the way they are viewed in society. The number one message pounded home by the ad industry is that women should be judged by the way they look. The expectation is flawlessness (young, thin, white and perfectly proportioned and groomed). Important secondary messages are the hard work it takes to look that way and that women who don’t measure up should feel guilty and ashamed. Sex is used to sell everything. Kilbourne is particularly concerned about the sexualization of children and teenagers in ads deliberately modeled after child pornography.
Only 5% of women have a model’s tall thin body type, with the narrow hips, long legs small breasts (unless they’re enhanced) favored by the fashion industry. This body type is based on genetic inheritance and can’t be achieved by diet, exercise or surgery, no matter how hard the advertising industry tries to persuade us otherwise. Often models are airbrushed to appear thinner and more flawless than they really are.
This constant emphasis on an unachievable ideal also negatively impacts the way men feel about real women, who are pear shaped. In addition, the objectification of women (ie their portrayal as sex objects) is directly linked to increased violence towards women. Viewing people as objects rather than human beings makes it easier to commit violence against them (and is used in military training).
The problem is aggravated by a growing tendency to eroticize violence and male dominance in advertising imagery.
Killing Us Softly 4, produced in 2010, isn’t available on YouTube for copyright reasons. It can be viewed for free on trutubetv (an uncensored noncorporate alternative to YouTube now that it’s been taken over by Google).
Killing US Softly 4 repeats most of the same ad images as number 3 but puts more emphasis on upsurge of appearance medicine (plastic and laser surgery, botox injections, etc). It also bemoans the introduction of size 0 and size 00 clothing, the pressure this places on models to starve themselves and the rise of eating disorders in the industry. Anna Carolina Reston was still modeling in 2009 when she died of anorexia nervosa.
The Most Revolutionary Act 
Thank you for sharing + what an eye opener! I was a teenager when she started her campaign + this is the first time I have ever seen this documentary. EXCELLENT! I sure hope it changes-someday:-)
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Glad you enjoyed it, Robbie. As Kilbourne states at the end of Killing Us Softly 3, she sees her main goal as changing attitudes rather than changing the ads. She hopes that when women are armed with sufficient information, they can resist their destructive messaging.
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I sure hope she can do it:-) I rasied two daughters and a son + It always bugged me the “media” and how they feed our daugther’s and son’s minds! Subliminal:-
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I remember when I first read Naomi Wolf’s example of how violence and beauty intertwine in advertising, and how shocked I was. The idea of beauty as iron maiden certainly made sense. Interesting how fairy tales perpetuate the myth too…the prince fell in love with a woman so deeply asleep that he had no idea who she really was, but she was beautiful anyway…and how girls learn these stories from being toddlers. With her ability to provide a makeover, the fairy godmother isn’t all that different to a credit card. It drives me mad, particularly having a daughter. But it’s everywhere. And at the same time, I don’t really like the divide between beautiful women and intelligent ones either.
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I, too, really worried about my daughter and purposely disconnected the cable at the age (6) when she first started showing interest in watching TV. I was aware of all the insidious messaging and worried that I didn’t have the skill to combat its effect.
Now that she’s an adult, I’m really happy I did this, as she seems to have a really healthy attitude towards her body and her appearance.
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Well done, she is right on the mark!
Leslie
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I particularly like the way she interspersed the images and the commentary – giving 3-4 examples for each point she makes.
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Well, quite actually this even goes back to the Fairytales. How about Beauty and the Beast? Now, let’s turn it around and have the beast as female and the beauty as the male. Would there have even been a story there? Hell no! And why did Cinderella have to get ‘fixed up’ before she could go to the ball? And for little Black children, this is what’s been drummed into them from childhood: Little ‘White’ Robin Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Rapunzel, “let down your GOLDEN hair,” and it just continues to present day.
Beauty, apparently, is a skeleton with long blonde hair.
Remember JonBenét Ramsey? They’re starting these children off on the path to an early grave by caking their faces with makeup and putting tiaras on their heads and making them wear adult clothing on little bodies that should be out playing and not attempting a ‘runway’ walk. We are really, really sick when we can do this and find nothing at all wrong with it. This sick mess starts almost from the cradle to the grave.
Thanks Dr. Bramhall for tackling this issue, head on!
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I don’t know if you watched the video, Shelby, but Kilbourne is highly critical of the blatant racism in the advertising industry. In the first place, an African American woman is highly unlikely to be used as a model unless she has very light skin and Caucasian features. And the copy that goes along with the images always portrays black women as exotic animals, with the strong implication they are sub-human.
The American public is bombarded constantly with insidious messaging that women are only okay if they are young, thin, immaculately groomed and above all WHITE. This always caused immense self-esteem issues in the African American women I worked with as clients. It always struck me as an incredibly cruel thing to do to teenage girls, as they’re so highly impressionable at that age.
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Dr. Bramhall, I just finished watching the video. Everything this lady said is Spot On. It was indeed, a MUST SEE! And I saw that JonBenét Ramsey was mentioned. And the references to Black women perceived as animals. No surprise there. Ms. Kilbourne was critical of the blatant racism but of course, it continues, nevertheless. We can only continue to try to counter this advertisement mess with reality and that the reality is a majority of advertising denigrates women, dehumanizes us and reduces us to mere objects for male pleasure and that we should not take it and run with it.
Again, thanks Dr. Bramhall!
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Reblogged this on Big Battles, Small Victories.
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