GNDS 120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Jean Kilbourne, Killing Us Softly, Heteropatriarchy

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Gender Studies
• Course: GNDS 120
• Professor: Hebibe Burca

Document Summary

Gnds 120 week 5: media and gender normativity (3. 1) How people experience power in different ways. Systems e. g. heteropatriarchy, colonialism, structural oppression produce/cause things such as beauty myth -> leading to violence against women. Jean kilbourne"s speech addresses how women are portrayed in corporate advertising. She illustrates the ways in which the demand for beauty standards and the compulsion to meet them function within capitalism. Beautified women become a commodity -- turned into things, into objects -- and sell products that promise to grant access to them. In turn, the desire to consume women in this form dehumanizes women for all viewers. Girls and women look at flawless" women and see that as an ideal model to look like. When in reality, models in advertisement are air brushed and photo-shopped to fit the company and media"s standards of beauty. Women are often sexualized and portrayed as docile & feminine in advertisement.