Jean Kilbourne's Killing Us Softly...

[Gravitycollapse]

I've seen several of the full films and it is quite possibly the greatest video collection of the warped media portrayals of women in existence.

This is only a lecture by Dr. Kilbourne. But it provides a good introduction to the series. And it touches briefly on objectification.

If you haven't seen any of the films, I highly suggest them.

[Ron Green]

1. Also see her book "Can't Buy My Love"

with an autobiographical intro. Very good stuff. She's the top thinker in this field in my opinion.

[BainsBane]

2. Technology has of course "improved" greatly

since this documentary was made, so that no major mass market magazine publishes a cover of a woman without altering her appearance, sometimes dramatically. Wonder how some of those stars never seem to age? It's not just good plastic surgeons. It's airbrushing, photoshop or whatever enhancement techniques are used these days. Waists and hips are trimmed, cleavage enhanced or diminished (depending on its variance from the media ideal). Wrinkles, lines, and dark circles are erased. Sometimes entire limbs disappear. It's all smoke and mirrors, only it leads young girls to starve themselves and develop eating disorders. It compels them to focus on reaching an unattainable physical ideal rather than excelling in fields in which they would compete against men, which is of course the point of it all. That is why objectification and increasingly unrealistic images of female beauty constitute a Backlash to the women's movement. It is sexist not only in terms of imagery but because it seeks to disempower women.

[KitSileya]

3. I posted the trailer to 'Killing us Softly 4'

in another thread - not that it helped, the usual suspects are still claiming that objectification is just normal sexuality, no matter how many times it has been explained to them.

[yt]

[/yt]

40 years she's been researching this - she's made 4 such documentaries, one every decade, and as you can hear in the video trailer, she thinks it's getting worse. Isn't that a kick in the gut?