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Jean Kilbourne

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Jean Kilbourne
Alma mater
OccupationMedia educator
WebsiteJeanKilbourne.com

Jean Kilbourne is an American educator, former model, filmmaker, author and activist, who is known as a pioneer of feminist advertising criticism.

Education and career[edit]

She has a Bachelor of Arts in English from Wellesley College and holds a doctorate in education from Boston University.[1][2]

At the time of her graduation from Wellesley, it was difficult for women to find jobs. Kilbourne had to work as a waitress and as a model while she attended secretarial school to find work in her field. She described her work as a model "soul-destroying," describing a culture of sexual harassment.[3][4] She then obtained a job at the BBC working as a secretary.[2]

Early in her scholarly career, Kilbourne explored 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. An idea that diverged significantly from the mainstream at the time, this approach has since become mainstream and an integral part of most prevention programs.[5][6]

Kilbourne was in the 2011 documentary Miss Representation.[7]

Public reception and impact[edit]

In the 1970s, her work pioneered the criticism of a growing trend among advertisers to objectify women, now a robust field within feminist criticism of the media. According to The New York Times Magazine and The Boston Globe, she was among the top three most popular guest lecturers on college campuses, speaking at more than half of all universities and colleges in Northern America.[4] Her 2000 book, Can’t Buy My Love, was recognized with a Distinguished Publication Award from the Association for Women in Psychology.[8]

In 2015, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.[9]

In 2019, 40 years after the release of her documentary Killing Us Softly, Jennifer Pozner, the director of the organization Women in Media & News, said, "Kilbourne’s main point—that advertising creates a toxic cultural environment in which sexual objectification, physical subjugation and intellectual trivialization of women has deep psychological and political resonance—is more compelling than ever."[4]

Criticism[edit]

In the 2006 article "Market Feminism: The Case for a Paradigm Shift" by Linda M. Scott, Still Killing Us Softly from 1987 was criticized as being a near duplicate film from the 1979 original.[10] "Beyond Additions and Exceptions: The Category of Transgender and New Pedagogical Approaches for Women's Studies" calls for a change in teaching materials within Women's Studies courses since textbooks typically define women based on their anatomy, which excludes trans women, "[stabilizing] the normativity of hegemonic sex and gender embodiments by naturalizing nontransgender bodies." The authors state that "by neglecting to acknowledge or critique dominant couplings of bodies and genders, Kilbourne is able to neatly flip the terms of the binary she sets up," and that "the absence of this critique is connected to her failure to interrogate the ways in which the category of women is constructed in conjunction with a host of other identity categories" such as race.[11]

Documentaries and publications[edit]

Filmography[edit]

  • Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising’s Image of Women (2010)
  • Deadly Persuasion: Advertising & Addiction (2004)
  • Spin the Bottle: Sex, Lies, & Alcohol (2004)
  • Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising’s Image of Women (2000)
  • The End of Education (with Neil Postman, 1996)
  • Slim Hopes: Advertising & the Obsession with Thinness (1995)
  • Sexual Harassment: Building Awareness on Campus (1995)
  • The Killing Screens: Media and the Culture of Violence (1994)
  • Pack of Lies: The Advertising of Tobacco (1992)
  • Advertising Alcohol: Calling the Shots (2nd Edition) (1991)
  • Still Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women (1987)
  • Calling the Shots: Advertising Alcohol (1982)
  • Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women (1979)

Publications[edit]

  • Kilbourne, Jean; Levin, Diane E. (2008). So sexy so soon: the new sexualized childhood, and what parents can do to protect their kids. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 9780345505071.
  • Kilbourne, Jean (2000). Can't buy my love: how advertising changes the way we think and feel. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9780684866000.
Originally published as Deadly Persuasion by Simon & Schuster in 1999, won the Distinguished Publication Award from the Association for Women in Psychology.[12]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "HIDDEN MEANINGS ADVERTISING CRITIC SAYS HARMFUL MESSAGES LIE BENEATH SLICK SURFACES". The Morning Call. March 8, 1992. Retrieved July 8, 2024.
  2. ^ a b English, Bella. "Educator Jean Kilbourne is honored for her work on advertising's toxic portrayal of women - The Boston Globe". Boston Globe. Retrieved July 8, 2024.
  3. ^ "A conversation with Jean Kilbourne". Denier. Retrieved July 8, 2024.
  4. ^ a b c Baker, Carrie N. (October 2, 2019). "Killing Us Softly: Then and Now". Ms. Magazine. Retrieved July 8, 2024.
  5. ^ Dee, Juliet (1996), "Jean Kilbourne", in Signorielli, Nancy (ed.), Women in communication: a biographical sourcebook, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, pp. 236–242, ISBN 9780313291647.
  6. ^ Timke, Edward; Kilbourne, Jean (2018). "Fighting for a Positive Cultural Environment: An Interview with Jean Kilbourne". Advertising & Society Quarterly. 19 (4). doi:10.1353/asr.2018.0035. ISSN 2475-1790. S2CID 189124011.
  7. ^ Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (March 9, 2012). "Future of feminism: no more media sexualization of women". msmagazine.com. Ms. Archived from the original on January 11, 2013.
  8. ^ "The Deadly Persuasion of Advertising". Tri States Public Radio. February 28, 2009. Retrieved July 8, 2024.
  9. ^ Zeppieri-Caruana, Marisa. "10 women honored at Hall of Fame induction". Democrat and Chronicle. USA Today. Retrieved October 4, 2015.
  10. ^ Scott, Linda M. (2000), "Market feminism: the case for a paradigm shift", in Catterall, Miriam; Maclaran, Pauline; Stevens, Lorna (eds.), Marketing and feminism: current issues and research, Routledge Interpretive Marketing Research, London New York: Routledge, pp. 16–38, ISBN 9780415219730.
  11. ^ Beauchamp, Toby; D'Harlingue, Benjamin (Summer 2012). "Beyond additions and exceptions: the category of transgender and new pedagogical approaches for women's studies". Feminist Formations. 24 (2): 25–51. doi:10.1353/ff.2012.0020. S2CID 144403444.
  12. ^ Staff writer. "Distinguished Publication Award: Past Distinguished Publication Awards". awpsych.org. Association for Women in Psychology. Archived from the original on April 18, 2016.
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