SEX SELLS - Killing Us Softly 3

I was looking through some old emails and revisited a URL link sent by Terence - Demand Your Dignity. This time, I spent more time absorbing the marvelous video resources on the site. The media bug in me was intrigued by Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly 3 Advertising's Image of Women. I found the full 30min presentation clip on YouTube. Great material put together to re-empathize what the advertising culture is doing to us all.

Jean Kilbourne's pioneering work helped develop and popularize the study of gender representation in advertising. Her award-winning films Killing Us Softly (1979) and Still Killing Us Softly (1987) have influenced millions of college and high school students across two generations and on an international scale.

In this important film produced in 2000, Kilbourne reviews if and how the image of women in advertising has changed over the last 20 years. With wit and warmth, Kilbourne uses over 160 ads and commercials to critique advertising’s image of women. By fostering creative and productive dialogue, she invites viewers to look at familiar images in a new way, that moves and empowers them to take action.









A study guide and handouts for this video is available online from the Media Education Foundation.

To be released in April this year is an update to the Killing Us Softly series - Killing Us Softly 4. The film marshals a range of new print and television advertisements to lay bare a stunning pattern of damaging gender stereotypes - images and messages that too often reinforce unrealistic, and unhealthy, perceptions of beauty, perfection, and sexuality. The DVD can be ordered online at Media Education Foundation.

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