Renowned Scholar Jean Kilbourne Speaks to the School

[FULL STORY]

 

Isidore Newman School was honored to welcome author and filmmaker Jean Kilbourne to speak to the community and 8^th through 12^th grade students in a two-day engagement on Tuesday, October 4, and Wednesday October 5. A long-time critic of deceptive advertising and a proponent of media literacy, Kilbourne lectured on the portrayal of women and children in advertising, as well as the effect of pervasive ads for alcohol and tobacco.

 

Kilbourne made two different presentations to two separate audiences. In an evening lecture for the community she presented “So Sexy So Soon,” an in-depth look at the images that advertising presents of women and girls – and increasingly young men and boys, and what parents and schools can do to promote media literacy. For the students, she made a presentation that outlined the tactics that advertisers use to promote increased alcohol and tobacco use, and how to critically view these advertisements. Both presentations were compelling and thought-provoking.

 

In her evening lecture, Kilbourne stressed how she believes the media and advertising world distort our view of how women and girls look and act– creating an ideal that is unattainable. Kilbourne related to her audience that this message is reaching a younger and younger audience. She referenced studies that showed that girls as young as six years old felt that they needed to lose weight. “At its deepest level,” said Kilbourne, the advertising industry is “cutting girls down to size.” This constant stress on an impossible body image is damaging to young girls and young boys. Accompanied by pictures on the auditorium’s screen, Kilbourne used images from the mainstream media to illustrate her points.

 

Kilbourne is hopeful that increased focus on these issues will yield positive results. She believes that through education, activism, media literacy, schools and families can begin to see this trend as a public health issue. 

 

In her talk with the students, Kilbourne focused on two products that she feels the media specifically targets at teens: alcohol and tobacco. In the case of tobacco, Kilbourne stressed that when companies sell a product like tobacco, they are “in the business of getting new customers.” She backed this claim up with statistics. Few adults decide to take up smoking. She went on to say that the industry must “get 3,000 children to start smoking every day to replace those who die or quit.” The cigarette industry spends more than $15 billion annually to produce a steady stream of new customers.

 

While the alcohol industry’s $3 billion annual advertising budget is significantly less than tobacco, itstill has an effect on children. In the alcohol advertising examples she showed, alcohol use was depicted in a fun, consequence-free world, and at worst a world where a excessive drinking is something desirable. She said that this is to encourage high-risk drinking, which in turn sells more alcohol products. She went on to assert that the companies’ success relies on overconsumption. Though billboards, print ads, and internet banners stress to us to drink responsibly, that is not what the industry conveys, according to Kilbourne. If every adult in America “drank responsibly” (two drinks per day for a male and one for a female), alcohol sales would drop by 80 percent.

 

While we cannot stop children from seeing advertisements, we can help them to understand what they do see and make critical choices with about the information presented in ads. Again, the solution lies in education and media literacy. To help our students critically dissect and decode advertising, we help them determine what is being said and help them to accept or reject the message of the advertiser.

Jean Kilbourne is internationally recognized for her groundbreaking work on the image of women in advertising and for her critical studies of alcohol and tobacco advertising. In the late 1960s she began her exploration of the connection between advertising and several public health issues, including violence against women, eating disorders, and addiction, and launched a movement to promote media literacy as a way to prevent these problems. A radical and original idea at the time, this approach is now mainstream and an integral part of most prevention programs. According to Susan Faludi, “Jean Kilbourne’s work is pioneering and crucial to the dialogue of one of the most underexplored, yet most powerful, realms of American culture—advertising. We owe her a great debt.” Mary Pipher has called Kilbourne “our best, most compassionate teacher.”

 

Her films, lectures and television appearances have been seen by millions of people throughout the world. She is the creator of the renowned Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women film series and the author of the award-winning book Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel. To learn more about her work, the techniques and problems of mainstream advertising and more, please visit her website: www.jeankilbourne.com.