DIANE COCHRAN Of The Gazette Staff | Posted: Monday, September 21, 2009
Forty years after Jean Kilbourne began talking about the way advertisers exploit women, she thinks the phenomenon has worsened.
But Kilbourne is not disheartened.
"When I started talking about this, I was alone," she said. "People thought I was crazy. Now that's not true at all. My ideas that were radical at the time are now mainstream."
The author, filmmaker and lecturer will bring some of those ideas to Red Lodge this weekend, when she is slated to speak during a Saturday brunch at the Bridge Creek restaurant.
Kilbourne will talk about how the portrayal of women in advertising promotes violence. Advertisers objectify women, depicting them as things rather than as people, she said.
"When you turn a human being into a thing, you basically make violence and abuse inevitable," Kilbourne said.
"It's very difficult to be violent toward someone considered an equal human being, but it's very easy to abuse a thing."
Kilbourne became interested in images of women in the media after working as a model as a young woman.
She is now a senior scholar at the Wellesley Centers for Women in Wellesley, Mass., and an expert in media literacy.
Kilbourne is known for her film "Killing Us Softly," which details the way women are portrayed in advertising. She is also the author of "So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids."
Her Red Lodge talk is being sponsored by Domestic and Sexual Violence Services of Carbon County.
Kilbourne said advertisers continue to use unrealistic and damaging imagery to market their products, despite research that shows it is harmful, because it works.
"You can sell a lot more products to people who feel bad about themselves than to people who feel fine," she said.
Contact Diane Cochran at dcochran@billingsgazette.com or 657-1287.
