The naked truth: advertising's image of women | Jean Kilbourne | TEDxLafayetteCollege

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.
Pioneering activist and cultural theorist Jean Kilbourne has been studying the image of women in advertising for over 40 years. In this rapid-fire, passionate, and highly entertaining talk, she discusses the experiences that inspired her to create this new field and vividly illustrates how these images affect us all. You'll never look at an ad in the same way again.

I started collecting ads and talking
about the image of women in advertising

in the late 1960s.

As far as I know,
I was the first person to do this.

I tore ads out of magazines,
put them on my refrigerator,

and gradually, I began to see
a pattern in the ads,

a kind of statement about what it meant
to be a woman in the culture.

I put together a slide presentation
and began traveling around the country.

In 1979, I made my first film

"Killing Us Softly:
Advertising's Image of Women",

which I have remade
three times since then.

These were some of the ads
in my original collection long time ago.

"Feminine odor is everyone's problem."

"If your hair isn't beautiful,
the rest hardly matters."

"Honey, your anti-antiperspirant spray
just doesn't do it."

"I'd probably never be married now,
if I hadn't lost 49 pounds."

Which, one woman told me, was the best
advertisement for fat she had ever seen.

(Laughter)

I am going to do a very abbreviated
version of this talk today,

but I want to begin the question
that I most often get asked, which is:

"How did you get into this?
What got you started?"

Many factors in my life
led to this interest.

I became active in the second wave
of the women's movement

right away in the late 1960s.

I'd worked in media.

I spent a year in London working
for the British Broadcasting Corporation,

and a year in Paris working
for a French film company.

This sounds much more glamorous
than it was - I was a secretary.

In those days, options for women
were very limited.

I was a secretary, I was a waitress,

but I did have one other option
that I rarely talk about.

I was encouraged to enter
beauty pageants and to model.

This is artfully cropped
to make it look as if I won.

I was, in fact, the runner up.

This was my first ad,

and I think the car tells you something
about how long ago this was,

and this ran in a London newspaper.

So modeling was one of the very few ways

that a woman could
make money in those days.

It was very seductive,

but for me it was also alienating,
it was soul-destroying.

There was a whole lot of sexual harassment
that came with the territory,

so I didn't follow that path.

But it left me with a lifelong interest

in the whole idea of beauty
and the power of the image.

Since that time, advertising has become
much more widespread, powerful,

and sophisticated than ever before.

Babies at the age of 6 months
can recognize corporate logos,

and that is the age at which marketers
are now starting to target our children.

At the same time, just about everyone
feels personally exempt

from the influence of advertising.

Wherever I go, what I hear
more than anything else is:

"I don't pay attention to ads,
I just tune them out.

They have no effect on me."

I hear this most often from people
wearing Abercrombie T-shirts,

but that is another story.

(Laughter)

The influence of advertising
is quick, cumulative,

and for the most part, subconscious.

Ads sell more than products.

Now, in many ways,
we have obviously come a long way.

But from my perspective of over 40 years,

the image of women in advertising
is worse than ever.

The pressure on women
to be young, thin, beautiful

is more intense then ever before.

It has always been impossible.

Years ago, the supermodel
Cindy Crawford said:

"I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford."

She couldn't, of course,
no one can look like this.

But it is really impossible today
because of the magic of Photoshop,

which can turn this woman
into this woman

and then try to make us believe
that an anti-aging cream can do this.

Now, she is a beautiful woman,

but older women are considered
attractive in our culture

only insofar as we stay looking
impossibly young.

We learn to read men's
and women's faces very differently.

Here we have Brad Pitt
and former supermodel Linda Evangelista,

about the same age,
each one of them in an ad for Chanel,

but he gets to look like a human being,
and she is transformed into a cartoon.

Sometimes, every now and then,
a celebrity resists.

As you may know, just this week
Lorde sent out a tweet

with an unretouched photograph
below the photoshopped version,

and she tweeted: "Remember, flaws are OK."

Good for her, but this
doesn't happen very often.

Men are photoshopped too,

but when men are photoshopped,
they are made bigger.

Andy Roddick laughed when he saw
the bulked-up arms on this cover photo,

and suggested they should be returned
to the man they belong to.

(Laughter)

The obsession with thinness
is worse than ever because of Photoshop.

Her head is bigger than her pelvis:
this is an anatomical impossibility.

(Laughter)

The actual model for this ad
was fired for being too fat,

and they used Photoshop
to create this freakish image.

More recently, they used Photoshop
to remove the dreaded thigh gap.

Unfortunately, they also removed
a very important part of her body.

(Laughter)

So the image is impossible for everyone,
but particularly for women of color,

who are considered beautiful only insofar
as they resemble the white ideal:

light skin, straight hair,
Caucasian features, round eyes.

Even Beyonce's skin is lightened in ads.

The image isn't real. It is artificial.
It is constructed. It is impossible.

But real women and girls measure
ourselves against it every single day.

Of course, it affects female self-esteem,

and it affects how men feel
about the very real women in their lives.

Women's bodies are dismembered in ads,
in ad after ad, for all kinds of products,

and sometimes the body
is not only dismembered,

it's insulted.

As in this amazing ad
that ran quite a few years ago

in a lot of women and teen magazines.

This is the whole ad,
and I will read you the copy.

"Your breasts may be too big,
too saggy, too pert, too flat, too full,

too far apart, too close together,
too A cup, too lopsided, too jiggly,

too pale, too padded, too pointy,
too pendulous, or just two mosquito bites,

but with Dep styling products,

at least you can have your hair
the way you want it."

(Laughter)

It is ludicrous,
but this ran in teen magazines.

Teen magazines target 12-year-old girls.

They are saying to 12-year-olds:
"Your breasts will never be OK."

So our girls are getting
the message today so young

that they have to be incredibly thin,
and beautiful, and hot, and sexy,

and that they are going to fail.

Because there is no way
to measure up to this impossible ideal.

The self-esteem of girls
in America often plummets

when they reach adolescence.

Girls tend to feel fine about themselves
when they are 8, 9, 10 years old.

But they hit adolescence,
and they often hit a wall,

and certainly, part of this wall

is this terrible emphasis
on physical perfection.

Men's bodies are very rarely
dismembered in ads.

More than they used to be,
but still it tends to come as a shock.

This ad ran about 20 years ago,

in Vanity Fair, these are all
from the national mainstream media,

and it was one of the first examples
of turning men into sex objects.

But when this ad ran, about 20 years ago,

the ad was so shocking that the ad itself
got national media coverage.

It's a good thing
it got some coverage, I suppose.

(Laughter)

Reporters called me up
from all around the country:

"They're doing the same thing to men
they've always done to women."

Well, not quite.

They'd be doing the same thing to men
they've always done to women

if there were copy with this ad
that went like this:

"Your penis may be too small, too limp,
too droopy, too lopsided, too narrow,

too fat, too pale, too pointy,
to blunt, or just two inches.

(Laughter)

But at least you can have
a great pair of jeans."

(Laughter)

It would never happen, nor should it;

believe me, this is not
the kind of equality I am fighting for.

I don't want them to do this
to men anymore than to women.

But I think we can learn
something from these two ads,

one of which did happen,
one of which never would.

What they shows us very vividly

is that men and women inhabit
very different worlds.

Men basically don't live
in a world in which their...

Well, let me move on to another.

There are stereotypes
that harm men, of course,

but they tend to be less personal,
less related to the body.

However, men are objectified
more than they used to be,

but there really aren't consequences
as a result of that.

Men don't live in a world

in which they are likely to be
raped, harassed, or beaten.

At least, straight white men
don't live in such a world,

whereas women and girls do.

When women are objectified,

there is always the threat
of sexual violence,

there is always intimidation,
there is always the possibility of danger.

And women live in a world
defined by that threat,

whereas men, simply, do not.

The body language of women and girls

remains passive, vulnerable,
submissive, and very different

from the body language of men and boys.

Probably the best way to illustrate that

is to put a man
in a traditionally feminine pose:

it becomes obviously
trivializing and absurd.

Grown women are often infantilized in ads,

and increasingly,
little girls are sexualized.

I have been talking
about this for decades.

I wrote a book about it,
and it is getting worse.

This little girl is 9,

and this is happening in a culture

in which there is a widespread
sexual abuse of children.

Images like this don't cause this problem,

but they certainly normalize
very dangerous attitudes towards children.

Padded bras and thong panties
are sold for 7-year-olds

in major department stores.

And the latest product?
High heels for babies.

Not to leave boys out,

you can get t-shirts for your toddlers
that say things like "Pimp Squad".

(Laughter)

So boys are sexualized too, although
in a very different way than girls.

Boys are encouraged
to look at girls as sex objects,

boys are encouraged
to be sexually precocious,

and boys learned
to be tough and invulnerable,

basically starting in infancy.

Basically, we allow
our children to be sexualized,

but we refuse to educate them about sex.

The United States is
the only developed nation in the world

that doesn't teach
sex education in it's schools.

But our kids are getting sex education:

they are getting massive doses of it,

but they are getting it from advertising,
the media, the popular culture.

This is an ad for jeans,
although something seems to be missing.

But [for] each one of these ads

for major, international products,
major, mainstream media, very graphic,

the problem isn't sex,

it's the culture's pornographic attitude
towards sex, the trivialization of sex.

And nowhere is sex
more trivialized than in advertising

where by definition
it is used to sell everything.

"Whatever you are giving him tonight,
he will enjoy it more with rice."

I don't think I'm particularly naive,

but I haven't figured out yet
what the hell you do with rice.

(Laughter)

Maybe it's wild rice.

(Laughter)

One woman shouted out
she just hoped it wasn't Minute Rice.

(Laughter)

This is an old ad, of course,
you could say,

"Sex is always used to sell,"
and that is true.

But it is far more graphic
and pornographic today than ever before.

Just to illustrate that
I am going to show you an old ad

- this is an old ad
using sex to sell food -

and here is a current one, Burger King:

"The super seven incher.
It'll blow your mind away."

For a mainstream product; as is this one.

Now, all of these images, I think,
are actually profoundly anti-erotic,

because in advertising
and the popular culture,

sexuality belongs only
to the young and beautiful.

If you are not young and perfect looking,
you have no sexuality.

And this makes most people
feel less desirable.

How sexy can a woman feel,
if she hates her body?

The Internet has given us all
easy access to pornography these days,

and as porn becomes
more available and acceptable,

the language and the images of porn
become mainstream.

Young celebrities emulate the porn stars,

and these days, you can get
your little girl a pole dancing doll.

Girls are encouraged to present themselves
as strippers and porn stars,

to remove their pubic hair,
and to be sexually available

while expecting little
or nothing in return.

At the same time, they're insulted:

"Tastes great. Goes down easy."

As they learn that their
sexual behavior will be rewarded,

they learn to sexualize themselves,
to see themselves as objects.

These images cause real harm
to real girls and women.

Girls exposed to sexualized images
from a young age are more prone

to eating disorders, depression,
and low self-esteem.

Inevitably, the objectification
leads to violence,

and that's become much more extreme too.

Advertising often normalizes
and trivializes battering,

sexual assault, and even murder.

The truth is most men are not violent.
Overwhelmingly, most men are not violent.

But many men are afraid to speak up,
are afraid to support women,

and are afraid to challenge other men.

And I have great admiration
for those men who do.

These ads don't directly
cause violence against women,

but they normalize dangerous attitudes,

and they create a climate in which women
are often seen as things, as objects.

And certainly, turning a human being
into a thing is almost always

the first step towards justifying
violence against that person,

and that step is constantly taken
with women and girls.

So the violence, the abuse, is
partly the chilling but logical result

of this kind of objectification.

In all these ways,
things have gotten worse,

but in one big way,
they have gotten much better:

I am no longer alone.

There are scores of films,
hundreds of films, and books,

and organizations
like the Brave Girls Alliance

which recently had a great event
in Times Square.

Media literacy is being taught
in our schools,

there is political action
taking place around the world,

and I have an extensive
resource list on my website

that lists lots of these things.

I am inspired by young activists
like Julia Bloom who at the age of 14,

launched a petition to Seventeen magazine

asking them to limit their use
of Photoshop, and she succeeded,

- here she is celebrating
with some of her allies -

and inspired other girls to do the same.

This generation gives me hope.

But we have a long way to go.

The changes will have to be
profound and global,

and they will depend upon
an aware, active, educated public:

people who think of themselves
primarily as citizens

rather than primarily as consumers.

We are all affected by these images,

we all have a profound stake
in challenging them.

We must create a better world
for ourselves and our children.

After all these years,
I still have hope that we will.

Thank you so much.

(Applause)