Kline ! 1

Daniel Kline

ENG 101

Professor Bolton

18 February 2014

Fading Roses - A Regression of the Feminine Image

Advertising is everywhere, and how it affects us carries more weight than we may think.

There are always specific images that are attempting to come across our culture through

advertising like hot trends, the latest fashions, new television shows, highly anticipated movies,

etc; though, in more recent years, there has been a rise of the beauty image standard. Have

advertisements begun to subliminally tell women how to look in order to be beautiful? This

cookie-cutter method of "beautifying" a culture is demeaning and impersonal because it simply

places emphasis on the vain. Jean Kilbourne, the vocal leader of the feminist movement,

retaliates to this advertisement uprise in Killing Us Softly 4 by identifying the various

advertisement shortcomings. A prime example that supports Kilbourne's statements is the Target

clothing line advertisement in Vogue magazine. The article is a two page spread on which there

are spontaneous patterns and designs. In the midst of them, there is a woman who is in a dress

that bears the similar pattern and exact color pallet as the background. As a result, she blends in

impeccably. This Target advertisement in Vogue supports Kilbourne's Killing Us Softly 4 speech

in that it highlights the woman's dress over her true beauty, conditions the woman to become

nothing, and stereotypes beauty to a specific look.

!

Kline ! 2

The first point of Kilbourne's that the Target advertisement affirms is that the woman is

dehumanized by being compared to an inanimate object. She is beautiful, yet despite that, she

models a dress that does the talking for her. What does this say to women? It says that a woman

is not significant and that she needs to hide behind clothes and loud facades to supposedly

become seen. This deficit of attention causes depression and countless spending to desperately

keep up with the latest fashion. When the attention is switched from the woman to the

accessories she wears, it dehumanizes and lessens her importance to the price tag of her dress.

The second point that Kilbourne makes about modern day advertisement that is seen in

the Target ad is that women are taught to blend in instead of standing out. In the advertisement,

the woman blends into the background unusually well. This camouflage technique teaches

women that it is not only acceptable to blend in, but that it is mandatory and beautiful to do so.

This posts a societal problem in the fact that it entirely eradicates identity. To fade into the

background and become background noise creates a world where men are not only superior, but

they are the only human beings entitled to the privilege of existence. A regression of the the

feminine image to near nonexistence greatly contributes to the amount of sexual and physical

abuse that happens toward women today. Appallingly, media’s idea of blending into the

background is running rampant in advertisement today.

The third point in Target's advertisement that supports Kilbourne's statement in Killing Us

Softly is that beauty is restricted to a certain look. For starters, the woman is thin. Whether or not

the woman in this ad is photoshopped, the image clearly represents the small body type and

glorifies it as "ideal" above all else. There is a specific gene that creates the body type most

models today have, and to always use the small frame in modeling is a bit unfair to women who

Kline ! 3

are trying to fit into the model dress and are finding that it is genetically impossible to do so.

According to Kilborne, media has been pushing unhealthy methods of dieting to achieve a

certain waist size, such as skipping meals, unhealthy portions, and artificial medicines. What

media and advertisement does not cover, however, is that the models themselves are unhealthy in

their own ways and sometimes are even fake. Anorexia and countless other eating disorders

ravage in our world as a result of the beauty image shown, and as mentioned earlier, the models

themselves could be, in fact, fake. It is often heard that anything is possible with photoshop;

unfortunately, this statement comes to life in thinning bodies, beautifying faces and skin features,

and even "creating" Frankenstein models from images of several different people. In addition to

body image, the model in the Target advertisement has blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. This

ethnocentric view of beauty places pressure on the many unfortunate women who do not fit this

mold to pursue hair dye and colored contacts in order to feel significant. Advertisements today

preset an impossible skin for women to fit to achieve perfection and beauty.

All in all, media advertising may seem innocent on the surface, but further examination

of any advertisement reveals a hidden agenda; some of which play a terrible role in breaking

away the feminine image. If this discrimination were to continue at the pace it is in, we could

only expect the existing problems with vanity, eating disorders, depression, and various forms of

abuse to progress into a dismal snowball effect. Is there hope for this problem in our culture?

Hope will only remain hidden until those who oppose this regression stand up against it. People

all over America like Jean Kilbourne are putting their foot down to end this abusive imagery that

comes across our media today- men and women alike. Next time you are driving down the street,

Kline ! 4

watching television, surfing the internet, or even simply reading a magazine, think about the

advertisements you see and weight out what negative impact they may have on all who see it.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kline ! 5

Works Cited

Target. Advertisement. Vogue (Feb. 2014): 42-43. Print.

Killing Us Softly 4. Dir. Sut Jhally. Perf. Jean Kilbourne. Media Education Foundation, 2010.

Film.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Horry-Georgetown Technical College

!!!

Fading Roses

A Regression of the Feminine Image

!!!!!!!

Daniel Kline

English 101, Section 3

Professor Bolton

18 February 2014

!!!!