"Killing us Softly" on YouTube (35 minutes)

[CZBZ]

About Dr. Jean Kilbourne

"To a great extent, advertising tells us who we are and who we should be. What does advertising tell us today about women? It tells us just as did it 10 and 20 and 30 years ago that what’s most important about women is how we look. The first thing the advertisers do is surround us with the image of ideal female beauty so we all learn how important it is for a women to be beautiful and exactly what it takes. Jean Kilbourne continues her groundbreaking analysis of advertising’s depiction of women in this most recent update of her pioneering Killing Us Softly series. In fascinating detail, Kilbourne decodes an array of print and television advertisements to reveal a pattern of disturbing and destructive gender stereotypes. Her analysis challenges us to consider the relationship between advertising and broader issues of culture, identity, sexism, and gender violence." ~Top Documentary Films

Killing us Softly 1/4
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svpMan9cWyo&feature=related[/youtube]



Killing us Softly 2/4
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrVGGCeh9yk&feature=related[/youtube]



Killing us Softly 3/4
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IGeVr_TVfA&feature=related[/youtube]



Killing us Softly 4/4
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbFvCXd667U&feature=related[/youtube]



OR




Click this link and watch the film on Google:

Killing Us Softly3

[CZBZ]

So Sexy So Soon

Jean Kilbourne & Diane Levin on "Today"


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFK5L_T5KWg[/youtube]

"With virtually no government or public outcry, the multi-billion dollar youth marketing industry has been able to use the latest advances in psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience to transform American children into one of the most powerful and profitable consumer demographics in the world. American kids now influence an estimated $700 billion in annual spending, targeted virtually from birth with a relentless bombardment of sophisticated commercial appeals designed to sell everything from Hollywood merchandise and junk foods to iPods, cell phones, the family car and vacations. The result is that childhood itself has been commercialized. Drawing on the insights of experts, industry insiders, and children themselves, Consuming Kids traces the evolution and impact of this disturbing and unprecedented phenomenon, exposing the youth marketing industry's controversial tactics and exploring the effect of hyper-consumerism on the actual lived experience of children."

Trailer for Consuming Kids
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKH4YGKnOSs&feature=related[/youtube]



Consuming Kids: the documentary
about One Hour



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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCT7h-jwCWA&feature=related[/youtube]





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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3xtA88QuiQ&feature=related[/youtube]





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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWbEQxx5kXo&feature=related[/youtube]





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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mvCuyzuGJ0&feature=related[/youtube]





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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S3PisiCt4Q&feature=related[/youtube]





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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp--8MIrlhQ&feature=related[/youtube]





7/7
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buHcUqoFcGs&feature=related[/youtube]

[Flower]

CZ and all,

Here we talk about how an N can objectifiy us, but upon watching these videos, I got a reality jolt. Marketing and advertising campaigns usually run by men have reduced women to body parts.  These campaigns have been so slick that I didn't realize how much this has become "normalized."  Women's value is increasingly determined by their butts, boobs and booty calls.  I wonder how many of those in management in advertising agencies are narcissistic men.
As women are baring it all for the camera, souls are becoming stripped as well.  Yes, they are killing us softly....souls without substance.

Hug,
Flower

[SusyP14]

CZ,

I saw that documentary when I was in college in my Psychology of Women class.  It was super powerful.  When I am done with my Masters in Addictions (meaning I need to apply to grad school  ), I would love to get a PhD in Women's studies, so I can become EXTRA angry 

This was another AMAZING documentary along the same lines if you can order it on Netflix.  I was fortunate to see it at the movies WITH the director for a QA and he is still has active screenings in colleges:

http://americathebeautifuldoc.com/

[CZBZ]

"Souls without Substance" ~Flower

What an apt description! We are in a sure-fire plumb-totally huge mess in our society right now. It's hard for an old feminist like myself to see how women's Independence has been marketed. To see how our daughters are using their 'freedom' to assert their sexuality. They have no idea what it was like to be a man's property, nor do they understand the huge sacrifices so many women have made for their daughters' freedom! I watch pop culture and my eyes...hummmmmm....pop.

Yesterday, I got my hair done. The middle-aged woman's short cut with a few highlights to cover the gray and while sitting underneath a mass of foil papers, the hair dresser and I chatted about this documentary. She had never seen it but is having a tough time getting older and not receiving every man's attention when she walks in the room. She's 41.

I told her how liberating it was to get older and be able to go anywhere without garnering validation from ogling men. That getting older was so much better than being young and thin and pretty and sexually available to any man with an evolutionarily-driven penis. She wasn't convinced (becoming 'invisible' is a transition women need to get used to--------or NOT).

Then she started telling me about the girls in her son's high school and what they actually do to give boys sex. Some of those girls have already had breast implants. What's weird is that they have No Shame, no guilt about advertising their availability for sex because it doesn't 'mean' anything. You don't have to get married to have sex...now you can just have sex and that's it. Well, I'm not a prude really though this trend is very disturbing to me and it's getting worse than I could ever have imagined when feminists were making headway on the old idea that women were men's property and they could do with them whatever they chose. In her perception, the girls based their self-esteem on how HOT they were. Is that true?

In an unpredictable way, girls have turned themselves into sex objects but not without a mass campaign by media. Maybe this is what happens when Old Traditional structures are dismantled? When postmodern boomers take a hammer to anything our parents or grandparents built, our kids have nothing to hold on to? It's complicated, yea, I get that. And the harsh truth is that there is NO Way a parent can isolate a child from our 'mediated' culture that makes money on our Inner Narcissists. Like my $150 hair cut, color and highlight.

I told my hairdresser that if an older woman wanted to be invisible, she had to look good enough to not be noticed. ya know? 


Hugs,
CZ