Response

After watching Jean Kilbourne’s documentary on Killing Us Softly I was left with some reactions. I think the Jean Kilbourne was very subjective when she assessed the advisements and gave the advertisers a bad rap. Before you leave me comments in uproar know this: I agree with her that women are taken advantage of in advertisements and THAT IS WRONG. Now that we have that out of the way lets look deeper in to my disagreement with Jean. When she was looking at the children advertisements dealing with the children learning at a young age to either be “manly” or “innocent” this muse is wrong. I think that Jean should do a bit of close reading and research before taking a swing at the artists making these ads. At a young age children are subjective influence from many different areas including ads, so the problem starts with the ads dealing portraying women as innocent and portraying men as manly. I think that as a consumer you must have a filter and be able to “filter” the true meaning of the ad and be able to pass the nonsense aside. As consumers we need to be able to form our own opinions and as consumers we need to be able to send the message to the companies that we are sick of the ads they are sending out. As my dear friend Gandhi once said “Be the change you want to see in the world.”