Psychology of Childhood and Adolescence in an Urban Context

Kilbourne’s argument is very relevant in today’s society where women are constantly being sold in the advertisement world.  Women are faced with constant scrutiny by others, especially the entertainment world, about their bodies and self-image.  From the time of birth girls are always expected to be passive while boys are encouraged to “give ‘em hell.”  By the time a girl reaches adolescents physical perfection is drilled into her mind by the thousands of commercials the average person is confronted with in a day.  The explanation for why one in five women have an eating disorder is one that is obvious and has been obvious for years but just has been overlooked because a skinny girl brings in more revenue than an overweight woman that is portrayed as unattractive. 

Kilbourne explains that only five percent of women genetically have the body of a model and even those five percent may have eating disorders because of the pressure of the modeling industry is so cutthroat.  A woman is acceptable is she is young, thin, white, beautiful, carefully groomed and polished and any deviation from this is met by contempt and hostility.  Belittling women in ads had caused traumatic personal effects such as eating disorders, teen pregnancy, and accepting abuse as normal.  Even though women are the ones that are suffering the most, the structure of advertisement won’t change because the audiences are used to this womanly stereotype. 

The concepts that Kilbourne examine in “Killing us softly” about femininity and masculinity is congruent to what our texts portrays about gender and gender development.  Women are supposed to be soft, motherly, innocent individuals while men are taught and expected to be hard, emotionless, aggressive creatures.  Kilbourne mentions that women are expected to be innocent and sexy, virginal and experienced all at the same time.  This is a great summary for what is taught as gender development to a girl.  Children that are taught these stereotypical gender roles grow up to be adults that expect these stereotypes to stick and this is normal to them so when a man sees a woman being portrayed as a sex object its normal to him and its normal for women to believe men have power and control over many things in life.  People are very in tuned to the media and look to it for the newest trends and style.  Without the media many people will be lost because people would be forced to be their individual selves and not followers of the minority of fashion designers.       

Children are being molded by our media and all the advertisements they are exposed to on a daily basis is alarming.  Children are infamous for modeling people they find attractive and look up to so when the mass media constantly use a body type that is impossible to get by the average person it sets a lot of children up for disappointment and in some cases personal hatred.  The advertisement companies should really think about the false images they are selling.