This is the course blog for PH 663 - the theory-based, practical, action-packed Health Communication course for ace Health Promotion students in the Graduate School of Public Health at San Diego State University. Are we having fun or what!
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Week 11 - Media Advocacy
KEY CONCEPTS - Media advocacy - Issue framing - Agenda setting - Identity platform - Positioning and branding
It comes down to where you would like to be on the continuum of using “sex. looks and money.” This only my opinion, but I feel there are limits and standards that need to regulate what the identity of your product will be. I still feel that a product can be sold for its usefulness. It may require more thinking about your strategy, yet you do not always have to do what everyone else is doing which contributes to the objectification of women. “When in Rome you don’t have to do what Romans do”
My favorite part about yesterday (which was a great day all around) was the Kilbourne video. I thought about it quite a bit throughout the evening. In undergrad, I spent a lot of time doing research on the effects of advertising on women, primarily around the oh so popular topic of the menstrual cycle. :) I have since gotten away from that topic but lately have been missing it. Yesterday's video reinvigorated that passion in me, and made me feel like a feminist again. And I like it.
I never realized there are so many forms of media advocacy out there, including movies by Michael Moore, Oprah episodes, PBS shows, etc. Its intriguing how media advocacy is out there without being overty and preaching/advocating for something. Although, I could see how that tactic of preachiness can make people distance themselves from an issue. Jean Kilbourne is a perfect example of someone who understands how to engage people in a sensitive topic, a feminist topic at that, without having to be preachy. Both Kilbourne and Dr.Engelberg got me thinking about advertising and its place in PH. Kilbourne said we need to take advertising seriously. Dr.E said we have to see what "they" are doing and how we can do it too in PH. These two points complement each other because in PH we need to pay attention to advertising and realize how much of an impact it has on people both positively and negatively. That power of influence, and the creativeness behind it is a tactic we need to do more of.
I think it is sad that we have this standard that the only things that sell are sex, looks, and money, but unfortunately it is true. To what extent do we take advantage of this knowledge to cause a change in the way people perceive health and health issues. At the same time I really agreed with Jean Kilbourne and the effects of these images on us and our youth, how far do we go. The media is disgusting on how they portray women and how it is acceptable to both remove women as humans by objectifying them and then abuse them since they are only objects. We support a male based and women hated society. This gets me all fired up, but I LOVED Jean Kilbourne, and I will definitly be watching the rest of her series.
As long as we keep buying it because it was advertised with breasts it will keep happening. Until we buy it because it has quality or is a better product then it will keep happening. I looked in my daughter's room thinking I would find the dreaded demeaning advertisements. There were pictures by Monet on the walls lots of pictures of her friends A periodic Table 5 feet wide and not a single magazine,a how to write good news book and a Jay Silverstein FALLING UP cartoon book. I told her what I did and why, when she got home gave her a big hug. I am to never look in there again!!! She thinks I am "weird" and all of us "old" folks should relax. I am worried she can't even see it coming.
This week’s lecture also brought back a lot of my undergrad work. I took quite a few psychology of women classes and in one in particular we watched the Killing Us Softly video and then were given an in class assignment to look through magazines and count all the pictures that objectify women. I remember being absolutely shocked. I didn’t (and still don’t) read pop magazines on a regular basis but as she said in the video, no one is exempt from being effected. These pictures of “fake” women are everywhere and it is hard to not feel the need to at least try to look like them (even though in the back of your head you know it is impossible). I think the only solution for solving this problem is to teach all people (women and men) to be critical of the ads they see. Lets face it, it would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to get them to stop using sex, looks, and money to sell things but if people are taught at a young age to be critical then they will be able to make decisions for themselves if they product is worth buying not just simply because of the ad but because it is a quality product.
On another note, I was flipping through the channels last night and just happened to stop on American Idol and it was there special, Idol Gives Back show. Every single one of the stories they told asking for donations and for ‘us’ to make a change were health related. Yes, I think American Idol is a joke but talk about a good channel for getting the word out there about health disparities in this world. They had a ton of well recognized celebrities talking about and visiting malaria stricken villages and AIDS orphans in Africa and poor parts in New York were nobody has health insurance. They even had the Prime Minister of England on donating 20 million mosquito nets worth $200 million (I wonder if the nets will be used properly or if they will be used as fishing nets instead? I am a little hesitant to just give out nets because I have seen how just giving them may not be the best solution). I see this show as a form of media advocacy because although they were soliciting donations they were also raising awareness amongst people who may not otherwise pay attention to these health issues. Is this wrong-reason health promotion? I don’t think so, I see it as one of the only ways to teach millions of people who would not otherwise pay attention about health issues that are affecting our world. Yes, I do remain skeptical about where the money actually goes and because of that I did not donate but none the less I feel Idol Gives Back was a great way to get important health messages out to the masses.
Tuesday's lecture was the counterpart to the "Sex, Looks, and Money" lecture, paired with the "Wrong Reason Health Promotion" lecture. I feel I am utterly confused. Where is the line drawn when using sex to sell health promotion, if there is a line at all? Should I, as a woman, be more intuitive and find new and better ways to reach people? Also, should I, as a woman, be extremely offended by every ad that uses these tactics? What if that day I am a "public health promoter," should I just be happy that we are getting across to someone?
I really enjoyed the Killbourne clip. It was very well put together and easy to understand. It makes people step back and take look at what's really going on with the world today. The images advertisements use affects everyone. No matter what they say, "I don't pay attention to it" "It doesn't bother me" "I just ignore it" For me, it hits home. I am personally effected by these images everyday. It makes me feel so insecure about the way I look. I get my hair done, paint my nails, put on a new face with make-up and so forth. I get tired of it, but still do it? Why? When it's all around you, you can't not think about it.
Killing Us Softly is a wonderful video that I wish all young girls today can watch. jean Kilbourne is such a wonderful speaker. She is able to make such a controversial subject interesting, friendly, humorous, and informative all at the same time. I saw the video last semester in my woman's health class and I still got something different from it seeing it again. It would be great if the news or the media could take some tips from her and advocate for better portrayal of women in advertising, so that young girls would not be so obsessed with their body image or young boys won't look at girls as just objects. I know "sex sells," but then why do media and the news get so crazy when Britney Spears teen sister gets pregnant or when a Governor spends thousands on a prostitute. Speaking of lost teen girls in today's sex and violent society I saw a clip of some teen girls beating up a girl for posting mean comments on MySpace. The girls were taken to juvenile hall, but had no remorse for their actions and even on girl's mother didn’t seem to care what her daughter did. The good thing is that it made the news and hopefully someone will advocate about the dangers of MySpace and girl bullies. Maybe these girls should have watched Killing Us Softly.Check it out: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24051905#24012556
The clip “killing us softly” by Jean Killbourne was amazing and I enjoyed it very much. She is a very powerful speaker and I would recommend everyone out there to watch this, especially the women in our society as they should all be familiar with who she is. It definitely made me think about the advertisement industry and how they portray women to sell their products. She spoke of things that had not crossed my mind and stuck with me ever since then. Unfortunately, the sad truth is that women are used as objects and this problem is definitely not getting any better in our society but WORSE. I think a huge part of a public health professional’s goal should be informing especially the young girls about all these ads that surround them everywhere from TV to magazines to help them realize that there shouldn't be any expectations from them. Our society emphasizes so much about sex, money, and looks that it's so hard not to notice it and turn away from it. Perhaps public health professionals can start with parents and familiarize them with some of the ways to avoid all that are very influential to their kids.
Seems as if I missed a really cool class. One of my passions is how the media protrays women. What it comes down to is “tits and ass.” Excuse the language, but we all know it to be true. Every where you go you see, women front and center being objectified. We never see men put in this light and are not nearly as pressured as women are to fit that cookie cutter shape. And if they don’t they might as well go and hide under a rock. Just look at Hollywood, all the female before becoming big they look like the average person, and if they portray themselves as they they are they are told to loose weight (Lindsay Lohan was told to loose weight if she wanted to still be in the “adult” Hollywood spot light apparently she was told her being “that” weight as a child was fine but, now that she is an adult it was not acceptable), dress sexier, get your boobs done, and a tummy tuck, and you will make more money. I often look at stars before they became “big,” and they look actually normal, but normal is not good enough for our society. For example, today’s women is a size 14, I was doing some research for my thesis and saw that a size 4 in Hollywood was considered big…FAT to be exact, and that size 0 was optimal and yet some how you are suppose to have huge breast and be 5’7?!? Come on we all know that, that is impossible to do without taking extreme or unhealthy measures. What is this teaching our children and generations to come?
Everyone has brought up excellent points here. Dr. Kilbourne's video was thought provoking. Like others mentioned, her lecture has made me look at ads more critically than ever. As I type, I'm flipping through a Lucky magazine that's all about shopping, at least they say. But, more than anything, over half of the magazine is filled with ads. This one I just came across says, "You know that feeling when you find the perfect figure. And we're not talking salaries....The Natrelle Breast Enhancement Collection". The ad has this lady who is bare from the waist up. Actually, you can only see her from the waist up and she's covering her breasts and smiling. I mean, it's everything that Dr. Kilbourne was talking about. And, it's obvious that the ads are killing us softly. But to change that, it's going to take a change not in one individual, but collectively, as a society. "Good luck" many may say, but if media advocacy has taught me anything, it's assured me that we have to be our own advocates. This week in class, Dania recommended we check out "Unnatural Causes". I didn't get a chance to watch the show tonight, but I did catch some of the clips from tonight's show online and they hit home the importance of all of this, especially when chronic diseases plague so many specific communities. There is power in the community and the community can create change. "Unnatural Causes" does a great job of media advocacy and I would love to watch more. I would say more, but check out my blog page instead.
I too (like most if not all of the class) thought the Jean Killbourne video was amazing. I plan on showing it to my sister and a couple of my guy friend who might be in need of exposure to these issues. It does not really matter if there is a disagreement as to whether with health advocates like Killbourne or Michael Moore are correct, taking it too seriously etc, etc, what’s more important is that there is a voice that argues something different and presents a different side/real side of life so that we don’t normalize images objectifying women, or other ideas/values that are being sold to us or seeped in unconsciously. I remember when I was a teenager, I really did think the women in the magazines had flawless, pore less skin and brilliant white teeth. This was disconcerting as a teenager going through all the lovely puberty changes and definitely not having those attributes. I wish I had known then what I know now, so keep that in mind Jack, your daughter is lucky you are in this class and that you care!
I really enjoy how so much of what we learned this semester is coming together during these last few weeks. Coming full circle on the issue of "how far will we go to get our health message across" has helped me to soften my view on creating messages using "whatever it takes" to get someone's attention and interest about a certain health topic. It's true that sex, looks and money sell, but it's also true that these selling techniques have produced images that are demoralizing and degrading to women, as shown by Jean Kilbourne's Killing Us Softly video. The negative portrayal of women is a huge problem in our society and truly fixing this issue goes way beyond simply eliminating certain images from our media. Through our roles as public health promoters, we will hopefully have the ability to positively influence our society's views on women and also come up with creative ways to get our messages heard and seen! That said, I hope we will accept that not all images focusing on the beauty of a woman should be eliminated. Perhaps we can work to broaden/expand the definition of what is truly beautiful about a woman to be all those things beyond, yet still including, her sexuality.
The media can be a powerful tool to change the attitudes and behaviors of the public. I have been aware of ads that objectify women, however, Kilbourne's video really opened my eyes to how much society is inundated with advertisements that aim to captivate people by sex and looks. How do we keep young girls from developing eating disorders and suffering from poor self-image and low self-esteem with all these messages portraying societies unrealistic expectations of women? I found this Dove health campaign website that attempts to counteract the persuasive beauty messages aimed at women. I thought the designers of the Dove message did a great job by targeting the parents of young girls to help prevent them from going to drastic and unhealthy measures to meet the cultural trends of ridiculously thin physiques.
Check it out at: http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/home.asp
I also appreciated seeing the Kilbourne video and am looking forward to watching the parts that we did not get a chance to see in class. I think her message regarding the excessive objectification of women in media and advertising is an important one that more people need to hear. Watching this video reminded me of another film that I watched in a women's studies class earlier this semester about the effects of how gender is constructed and portrayed in our society. This film featured a women who I believe is on record as having the most plastic surgeries. She had this idea of what constituted the 'perfect' woman and just went down her list getting those things surgically done. Although she claims not to have been influenced by popular media, it sounds like Kilbourne would not agree with that. As mentioned in the Kilbourne video, even if we think we are not paying attention to the ads and portrays of women in the media, they are affecting us. Ideally I would love it if we could turn this around, and get rid of all the negative portrayals of women and the idea of non-existent 'perfect' woman. Unfortunately that is a bit of a daunting task. More realistic ways of taking action would be to share this video with others, speak up when seeing demeaning ads, and think carefully about all this when using sex, looks and money in message promotion. Having said that though, that last bit gets tricky since we know that sex, looks and money sell. So I guess it falls back on the individual to find a balance between motivation people for the 'wrong' reason and effectively promotion a message. Lots to consider!
Media advocacy is alway a touchy subject for me since I feel so strongly against selling health behavior via sex, money and looks--I guess beauty is tided in with health and that definitely sells. But I hold my own, I don't think people seek out the negatives looking for sound health advice unless our society has become sooo debased. People are generally interested in what benefits them in the long term advertisers need to get their attention. It is truly a sad state of affairs for this country. When one looks at other cultures, breasts are not the main focus for men. We are all a product of the desensitization of the emotions and mind washed in mire of those who play on baser issues. Framing at system-level was a definite must to maintain in this data bank of useful, interesting, applicable information. Examples of campaigns were useful and good contast to big corps and policy makers who try to bring down the big guys. I really enjoyed the Kilbourne video and sooo much truth of our cultural climate. Trivilizing sex, women and all esle that goes along with is plays hazards with. Appreciate the extra advice on our project and finding our souls.
I loved the discussion at class on Tuesday. Specially after the kilbourne video. I think i have always been a media critic, ever since my mom told me that commercials were most likely not there for my own personal benefit, but for the benefit of those capitalizing from my consumerism. I also enjoyed the discussion about media advocacy and what elements are needed in order to make it so. The assigned reading was on of my favorites so far. I am a big supporter of societal change, as opposed to the sole individual.
18 comments:
It comes down to where you would like to be on the continuum of using “sex. looks and money.” This only my opinion, but I feel there are limits and standards that need to regulate what the identity of your product will be. I still feel that a product can be sold for its usefulness. It may require more thinking about your strategy, yet you do not always have to do what everyone else is doing which contributes to the objectification of women. “When in Rome you don’t have to do what Romans do”
My favorite part about yesterday (which was a great day all around) was the Kilbourne video. I thought about it quite a bit throughout the evening. In undergrad, I spent a lot of time doing research on the effects of advertising on women, primarily around the oh so popular topic of the menstrual cycle. :) I have since gotten away from that topic but lately have been missing it. Yesterday's video reinvigorated that passion in me, and made me feel like a feminist again. And I like it.
I never realized there are so many forms of media advocacy out there, including movies by Michael Moore, Oprah episodes, PBS shows, etc. Its intriguing how media advocacy is out there without being overty and preaching/advocating for something. Although, I could see how that tactic of preachiness can make people distance themselves from an issue. Jean Kilbourne is a perfect example of someone who understands how to engage people in a sensitive topic, a feminist topic at that, without having to be preachy. Both Kilbourne and Dr.Engelberg got me thinking about advertising and its place in PH. Kilbourne said we need to take advertising seriously. Dr.E said we have to see what "they" are doing and how we can do it too in PH. These two points complement each other because in PH we need to pay attention to advertising and realize how much of an impact it has on people both positively and negatively. That power of influence, and the creativeness behind it is a tactic we need to do more of.
I think it is sad that we have this standard that the only things that sell are sex, looks, and money, but unfortunately it is true. To what extent do we take advantage of this knowledge to cause a change in the way people perceive health and health issues. At the same time I really agreed with Jean Kilbourne and the effects of these images on us and our youth, how far do we go. The media is disgusting on how they portray women and how it is acceptable to both remove women as humans by objectifying them and then abuse them since they are only objects. We support a male based and women hated society. This gets me all fired up, but I LOVED Jean Kilbourne, and I will definitly be watching the rest of her series.
As long as we keep buying it because it was advertised with breasts it will keep happening. Until we buy it because it has quality or is a better product then it will keep happening. I looked in my daughter's room thinking I would find the dreaded demeaning advertisements. There were pictures by Monet on the walls lots of pictures of her friends A periodic Table 5 feet wide and not a single magazine,a how to write good news book and a Jay Silverstein FALLING UP cartoon book. I told her what I did and why, when she got home gave her a big hug. I am to never look in there again!!! She thinks I am "weird" and all of us "old" folks should relax. I am worried she can't even see it coming.
This week’s lecture also brought back a lot of my undergrad work. I took quite a few psychology of women classes and in one in particular we watched the Killing Us Softly video and then were given an in class assignment to look through magazines and count all the pictures that objectify women. I remember being absolutely shocked. I didn’t (and still don’t) read pop magazines on a regular basis but as she said in the video, no one is exempt from being effected. These pictures of “fake” women are everywhere and it is hard to not feel the need to at least try to look like them (even though in the back of your head you know it is impossible). I think the only solution for solving this problem is to teach all people (women and men) to be critical of the ads they see. Lets face it, it would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to get them to stop using sex, looks, and money to sell things but if people are taught at a young age to be critical then they will be able to make decisions for themselves if they product is worth buying not just simply because of the ad but because it is a quality product.
On another note, I was flipping through the channels last night and just happened to stop on American Idol and it was there special, Idol Gives Back show. Every single one of the stories they told asking for donations and for ‘us’ to make a change were health related. Yes, I think American Idol is a joke but talk about a good channel for getting the word out there about health disparities in this world. They had a ton of well recognized celebrities talking about and visiting malaria stricken villages and AIDS orphans in Africa and poor parts in New York were nobody has health insurance. They even had the Prime Minister of England on donating 20 million mosquito nets worth $200 million (I wonder if the nets will be used properly or if they will be used as fishing nets instead? I am a little hesitant to just give out nets because I have seen how just giving them may not be the best solution). I see this show as a form of media advocacy because although they were soliciting donations they were also raising awareness amongst people who may not otherwise pay attention to these health issues. Is this wrong-reason health promotion? I don’t think so, I see it as one of the only ways to teach millions of people who would not otherwise pay attention about health issues that are affecting our world. Yes, I do remain skeptical about where the money actually goes and because of that I did not donate but none the less I feel Idol Gives Back was a great way to get important health messages out to the masses.
Tuesday's lecture was the counterpart to the "Sex, Looks, and Money" lecture, paired with the "Wrong Reason Health Promotion" lecture. I feel I am utterly confused. Where is the line drawn when using sex to sell health promotion, if there is a line at all? Should I, as a woman, be more intuitive and find new and better ways to reach people? Also, should I, as a woman, be extremely offended by every ad that uses these tactics? What if that day I am a "public health promoter," should I just be happy that we are getting across to someone?
I really enjoyed the Killbourne clip. It was very well put together and easy to understand. It makes people step back and take look at what's really going on with the world today. The images advertisements use affects everyone. No matter what they say, "I don't pay attention to it" "It doesn't bother me" "I just ignore it" For me, it hits home. I am personally effected by these images everyday. It makes me feel so insecure about the way I look. I get my hair done, paint my nails, put on a new face with make-up and so forth. I get tired of it, but still do it? Why? When it's all around you, you can't not think about it.
Killing Us Softly is a wonderful video that I wish all young girls today can watch. jean Kilbourne is such a wonderful speaker. She is able to make such a controversial subject interesting, friendly, humorous, and informative all at the same time. I saw the video last semester in my woman's health class and I still got something different from it seeing it again. It would be great if the news or the media could take some tips from her and advocate for better portrayal of women in advertising, so that young girls would not be so obsessed with their body image or young boys won't look at girls as just objects. I know "sex sells," but then why do media and the news get so crazy when Britney Spears teen sister gets pregnant or when a Governor spends thousands on a prostitute. Speaking of lost teen girls in today's sex and violent society I saw a clip of some teen girls beating up a girl for posting mean comments on MySpace. The girls were taken to juvenile hall, but had no remorse for their actions and even on girl's mother didn’t seem to care what her daughter did. The good thing is that it made the news and hopefully someone will advocate about the dangers of MySpace and girl bullies. Maybe these girls should have watched Killing Us Softly.Check it out:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24051905#24012556
The clip “killing us softly” by Jean Killbourne was amazing and I enjoyed it very much. She is a very powerful speaker and I would recommend everyone out there to watch this, especially the women in our society as they should all be familiar with who she is. It definitely made me think about the advertisement industry and how they portray women to sell their products. She spoke of things that had not crossed my mind and stuck with me ever since then. Unfortunately, the sad truth is that women are used as objects and this problem is definitely not getting any better in our society but WORSE. I think a huge part of a public health professional’s goal should be informing especially the young girls about all these ads that surround them everywhere from TV to magazines to help them realize that there shouldn't be any expectations from them. Our society emphasizes so much about sex, money, and looks that it's so hard not to notice it and turn away from it. Perhaps public health professionals can start with parents and familiarize them with some of the ways to avoid all that are very influential to their kids.
Seems as if I missed a really cool class. One of my passions is how the media protrays women. What it comes down to is “tits and ass.” Excuse the language, but we all know it to be true. Every where you go you see, women front and center being objectified. We never see men put in this light and are not nearly as pressured as women are to fit that cookie cutter shape. And if they don’t they might as well go and hide under a rock. Just look at Hollywood, all the female before becoming big they look like the average person, and if they portray themselves as they they are they are told to loose weight (Lindsay Lohan was told to loose weight if she wanted to still be in the “adult” Hollywood spot light apparently she was told her being “that” weight as a child was fine but, now that she is an adult it was not acceptable), dress sexier, get your boobs done, and a tummy tuck, and you will make more money. I often look at stars before they became “big,” and they look actually normal, but normal is not good enough for our society. For example, today’s women is a size 14, I was doing some research for my thesis and saw that a size 4 in Hollywood was considered big…FAT to be exact, and that size 0 was optimal and yet some how you are suppose to have huge breast and be 5’7?!? Come on we all know that, that is impossible to do without taking extreme or unhealthy measures. What is this teaching our children and generations to come?
Everyone has brought up excellent points here. Dr. Kilbourne's video was thought provoking. Like others mentioned, her lecture has made me look at ads more critically than ever. As I type, I'm flipping through a Lucky magazine that's all about shopping, at least they say. But, more than anything, over half of the magazine is filled with ads. This one I just came across says, "You know that feeling when you find the perfect figure. And we're not talking salaries....The Natrelle Breast Enhancement Collection". The ad has this lady who is bare from the waist up. Actually, you can only see her from the waist up and she's covering her breasts and smiling. I mean, it's everything that Dr. Kilbourne was talking about. And, it's obvious that the ads are killing us softly. But to change that, it's going to take a change not in one individual, but collectively, as a society. "Good luck" many may say, but if media advocacy has taught me anything, it's assured me that we have to be our own advocates. This week in class, Dania recommended we check out "Unnatural Causes". I didn't get a chance to watch the show tonight, but I did catch some of the clips from tonight's show online and they hit home the importance of all of this, especially when chronic diseases plague so many specific communities. There is power in the community and the community can create change. "Unnatural Causes" does a great job of media advocacy and I would love to watch more. I would say more, but check out my blog page instead.
I too (like most if not all of the class) thought the Jean Killbourne video was amazing. I plan on showing it to my sister and a couple of my guy friend who might be in need of exposure to these issues. It does not really matter if there is a disagreement as to whether with health advocates like Killbourne or Michael Moore are correct, taking it too seriously etc, etc, what’s more important is that there is a voice that argues something different and presents a different side/real side of life so that we don’t normalize images objectifying women, or other ideas/values that are being sold to us or seeped in unconsciously. I remember when I was a teenager, I really did think the women in the magazines had flawless, pore less skin and brilliant white teeth. This was disconcerting as a teenager going through all the lovely puberty changes and definitely not having those attributes. I wish I had known then what I know now, so keep that in mind Jack, your daughter is lucky you are in this class and that you care!
I really enjoy how so much of what we learned this semester is coming together during these last few weeks. Coming full circle on the issue of "how far will we go to get our health message across" has helped me to soften my view on creating messages using "whatever it takes" to get someone's attention and interest about a certain health topic. It's true that sex, looks and money sell, but it's also true that these selling techniques have produced images that are demoralizing and degrading to women, as shown by Jean Kilbourne's Killing Us Softly video. The negative portrayal of women is a huge problem in our society and truly fixing this issue goes way beyond simply eliminating certain images from our media. Through our roles as public health promoters, we will hopefully have the ability to positively influence our society's views on women and also come up with creative ways to get our messages heard and seen! That said, I hope we will accept that not all images focusing on the beauty of a woman should be eliminated. Perhaps we can work to broaden/expand the definition of what is truly beautiful about a woman to be all those things beyond, yet still including, her sexuality.
The media can be a powerful tool to change the attitudes and behaviors of the public. I have been aware of ads that objectify women, however, Kilbourne's video really opened my eyes to how much society is inundated with advertisements that aim to captivate people by sex and looks. How do we keep young girls from developing eating disorders and suffering from poor self-image and low self-esteem with all these messages portraying societies unrealistic expectations of women? I found this Dove health campaign website that attempts to counteract the persuasive beauty messages aimed at women. I thought the designers of the Dove message did a great job by targeting the parents of young girls to help prevent them from going to drastic and unhealthy measures to meet the cultural trends of ridiculously thin physiques.
Check it out at: http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/home.asp
I also appreciated seeing the Kilbourne video and am looking forward to watching the parts that we did not get a chance to see in class. I think her message regarding the excessive objectification of women in media and advertising is an important one that more people need to hear. Watching this video reminded me of another film that I watched in a women's studies class earlier this semester about the effects of how gender is constructed and portrayed in our society. This film featured a women who I believe is on record as having the most plastic surgeries. She had this idea of what constituted the 'perfect' woman and just went down her list getting those things surgically done. Although she claims not to have been influenced by popular media, it sounds like Kilbourne would not agree with that. As mentioned in the Kilbourne video, even if we think we are not paying attention to the ads and portrays of women in the media, they are affecting us.
Ideally I would love it if we could turn this around, and get rid of all the negative portrayals of women and the idea of non-existent 'perfect' woman. Unfortunately that is a bit of a daunting task. More realistic ways of taking action would be to share this video with others, speak up when seeing demeaning ads, and think carefully about all this when using sex, looks and money in message promotion. Having said that though, that last bit gets tricky since we know that sex, looks and money sell. So I guess it falls back on the individual to find a balance between motivation people for the 'wrong' reason and effectively promotion a message. Lots to consider!
Media advocacy is alway a touchy subject for me since I feel so strongly against selling health behavior via sex, money and looks--I guess beauty is tided in with health and that definitely sells. But I hold my own, I don't think people seek out the negatives looking for sound health advice unless our society has become sooo debased. People are generally interested in what benefits them in the long term advertisers need to get their attention. It is truly a sad state of affairs for this country. When one looks at other cultures, breasts are not the main focus for men. We are all a product of the desensitization of the emotions and mind washed in mire of those who play on baser issues. Framing at system-level was a definite must to maintain in this data bank of useful, interesting, applicable information. Examples of campaigns were useful and good contast to big corps and policy makers who try to bring down the big guys. I really enjoyed the Kilbourne video and sooo much truth of our cultural climate. Trivilizing sex, women and all esle that goes along with is plays hazards with. Appreciate the extra advice on our project and finding our souls.
I loved the discussion at class on Tuesday. Specially after the kilbourne video. I think i have always been a media critic, ever since my mom told me that commercials were most likely not there for my own personal benefit, but for the benefit of those capitalizing from my consumerism. I also enjoyed the discussion about media advocacy and what elements are needed in order to make it so. The assigned reading was on of my favorites so far. I am a big supporter of societal change, as opposed to the sole individual.
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