Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising's Image of Women (2010) Poster

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8/10
A Dose of Common Sense
roedyg13 March 2014
This is short documentary, only 45 minutes. It consists of Jean Kilbourne delivering a lecture with slides.

She has done this many times. She is organised and clear. Every point she makes she emphasises with real world examples of ads from magazines. With those example, there is no way anyone could contradict her.

She is not shrill. She is not detached. She just just exudes common sense.

I have not paid much attention to magazine ads for about 30 years. I was shocked how blatantly pornographic and violent they have become.

Companies make money by making people feel bad about themselves. The catch is, this is driving some young women to suicide.

The movie also discussed how pornography sometimes really screws up young males, to the point they can't have sex with real humans.

It also shows how makeup and photoshopping create models completely unlike the original models. Cindy Crawford says she wishes she actually looked like the photo covers of her.
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Kilbourne is entertaining and informative
bettycjung11 December 2017
12/11/17. A great documentary about how women are defined by Advertising, and it's not a pretty picture. By showing examples of print and TV advertising, Kilbourne shows how advertising pushes distorted and destructive ideals of femininity. The gender stereotypes are damaging and constantly demeans women by projecting unrealistic and unhealthy perceptions of perfection, sexuality and beauty. The images advance violence against women, eating disorders, and addiction. Women can never measure up, thus, the need to buy their products. Worth catching.
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4/10
Sexist Tripe
headbangingfilms3 February 2022
Warning: Spoilers
This "documentary" is nothing but a sexist rant from an aging woman clinging to her sexist world view. She spend the first twenty minutes talking about how advertising creates this image of women's body's and how it tells men what to look for, as if men were brutish animals only focused on breeding their next mate and discarding them when finished using the woman. I was deeply insulted by how often she completely absolves women of any responsibility in differentiating what women see in advertisements, from what is reality. She makes it sound like women are powerless to stop themselves from comparing themselves to the latest celebrity on the cover of Cosmo. Not only is her argument ignorant, it's dehumanizing towards women, reducing them to a helpless victim.

Skip this crap and save yourself 45 minutes..
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