Ads Kill Us Softly, Reaction Paper Example

As stated by Jean Kilbourne in Killing Us Softly 4, the advertising industry is a 250 billion dollar industry. According to this documentary, ads sell more than products. They are the pieces that sell values and images, concepts of sexuality and love, success, and what many believe as normalcy. They tell us who we are and who we should be. The problem with this is that they create an image that we will never be able to accomplish. The worst part about these ads is that they continue to create a certain stigma for women in general. They tell women and young girls that what is most important is how they look rather than what is on the inside. Women’s bodies are turned into things in advertising and the perfect woman is created and put upon a pedestal. These women become dehumanized and many young girls and women feel as if they have to achieve the advertisement’s sense of beauty in order for them to be beautiful. These women become objectified in many different ways and it affects their self-esteem. They feel that they have to be thin, with no blemishes, no wrinkles, and no scars in order to achieve this beauty. However, they are set up to fail as this is something that cannot be accomplished except through many rounds of photoshopping and manipulation through a computer. One of the largest problems these days in advertising is the increased sexualization of little girls. Sex is used to sell everything and many young girls get the wrong idea of sex at a very early age. Through these ads, they see sex as an adventure instead of something that should be done out of love. As the advertising industry puts more emphasis on how a woman looks, these women are going to continue to be subject to eating disorders, depression and low self-esteem. The more that these companies attempt to put a label on women, the more they are going to attempt to achieve this fake idea of beauty and continue to hurt themselves, both physically and emotionally, in order to achieve this success that is merely unachievable.