The Film Killing Us Softly - Essay Example

A dream house, luxurious car, noble apparel, and an ideal face and body – these are what most of us are striving hard to work for. Many people spend inconsiderable time, lots of money, and voluminous sweat to go after these things they feel are important, even though they admit they can live without them.

Between the years 1997 and 2007, women who use cosmetics and undergo surgeries increased by 457% every year, averaging almost 12 million women around the globe. These statistics show that women feel a sense of discontentment over their faces and figures. As Jean Kilbourne explains, the cause of this is the deceiving advertisements that are flagged all around us. Other than this effect, however, are more depressing problems such as gender socialization and objectification of women.

In a recent commercial posted by Pantene titled “Labels against Women”, society termed women as pushy, selfish, vain, and show-offs while men are persuasive, dedicated, neat, and smooth. These terms, which people often say are trivial matters, illustrate the gender socialization that happens in society. Because women are usually portrayed as house accessories, thoughts of them being the leaders and heads in companies, in construction works, and laborious tasks are almost impossible and seemed to be pre-judged by people. Because of the typical concept made for women, employers are hesitant of hiring them despite their qualifications or qualifications for the work they are applying for. When this happens, inequality and further, low self-esteem is experienced by the women.

Another dreadful effect of advertisements on women is objectification. It is almost impossible to see billboards on streets without the subject of sex and violence because this is how the commodities are marketed by most advertisers. Wonder why advertisers use this theme? It is because they try to fit into effective ways of persuading the people. Because advertisers observe some immediate impacts of these types of images on people, it resulted in all of them trying to fit into the theme of sex and violence. In sociology, this concept is called the price of conformity.  And as one model becomes or assumes the body of a certain drinking wine, for example, the more it would be appealing to the advertisers. The sad result of this is that people start to see women as objects, not people. This mentality would further lead to violence as Jean Kilbourne said, “Turning a human being into a thing is almost always the first step towards justifying violence against that person”. Women are dehumanized and any violence done on them would be tolerable from the standpoint of someone who has watched or viewed the advertisement.

In the film “Killing Us Softly”, Jean Kilbourne mentioned that “men and women inhabit different worlds”. Using the Pantene commercial stated above, society refers to men and women in different terminologies. Most often than not, women are degraded while men are applauded. Kilbourne’s concept of inhabiting a different world lies in the expectation of the society between the two genders. In her example, when a man goes into a store to buy a pair of pants, he will not be expected to find a size 0 or 00. However, this does not apply to women since society dictates and expects that women should have a size smaller than 0 or 00 (Kilbourne). So from this, it could be said that society’s imposed expectations on men and women differ and that these expectations create a division, a difference between the two genders.

To sum it up, advertisements are found everywhere. Some may think of it as something that does not affect people. Though these people establish a point, advertisements often work their way by penetrating our subconscious mind and creating an ideal notion that we would likely have.

As an analogy, advertisement is a distorted mirror. It is a mirror that reflects an almost perfect image of who we are, even to the extent of deceiving and destroying the healthy mind of society and the most beautiful feature of ours – that is, our self-esteem on our God-given image.