Giovonne – Kilbourne
May 20, 2011 by Kim Rybacki
I believe Kilbourne’s argument is a strong one, and the issue of the way women are being portrayed in the media has become more and more of a problem as media technology has advanced. Kilbourne argues that there is more pressure on women in the media to look beautiful and have bodies like models; more pressure than men. Even though Kilbourne was mostly talking about women, she also mentioned briefly the way men are also portrayed to act. Like the video we watched in class, men and boys talking and communicating about their feelings is seen as a weakness. In addition, the video from class talked about how men should not show their emotions and how they should always act tough. This idea is similar to when Kilbourne talks about men being tied to violence.
Kilbourne’s main point of her entire presentation was that women should have authentic and freely chosen lives. Clearly, the way women are portrayed in advertising, is preventing women from living individual lives like Kilbourne wants. The way that women and girls follow the way women are portrayed in advertising is similar to a concept in the book which comes from the Social Learning View; it is called modeling. It is a fairly simple concept but I think it makes a good comparison between children and adults. Modeling is described by the process by which children observe and imitate individuals of the same sex as themselves. Modeling can also be applied to women who feel like they need to look like the women seen in advertisements. Kilbourne added that children and young teenagers are being exploited as well. Another concept which applies to Kilbourne’s argument is called differential reinforcement. Differential reinforcement is the process by which girls and boys are differently rewarded for engaging in gender-appropriate behavior. This concept depicts Kilbourne’s idea that women are portrayed in the media with making themselves beautiful and spending lots of time and money doing so. Kilbourne says that women are rewarded and praised for their beauty. In addition, she says that women are shown to feel shame and guilt when they are not beautiful or don’t spend the time to make themselves beautiful. Differential reinforcement demonstrates that women are rewarded for their looks and disregarded if they aren’t good looking.
I believe that women have become very self-conscious in today’s world with all this pressure from the media to have amazing bodies and be like models. I myself, sometimes even talk with my guy friends about particular girls who think they aren’t skinny enough, and we always talk about how they are perfectly fine. However, it is the media that is pressuring them to think this way, just like Kilbourne says.
