Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt: Advertising and Violence by Jean Kilbourne

In “‘Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt’: Advertising and Violence” by Jean Kilbourne writes, “The way that ads portray bodies-especially women’s bodies- as objects conditions you to see each other in dehumanizing ways, thus “normalizing” attitudes that can lead to sexual aggression,” (575). Kilbourne introduces the impact of sexual advertising and the impact that it has on men and women. Women are continuously looked at as sexual objects in advertisements, from the Burger King Advertisement to the Playboy Magazines, seen in Figures #1 through #3, which are published. Sexual advertising is and can be completely derogatory towards women, and causes a tension between women and men. These advertisements create a distorted image on how a person should view the opposite sex, which generate fake gender roles, made up by society. It can also cause men and women to seriously misjudge one another, in everyday interactions.

Advertising is everywhere, from our T.V. to the ads, ads seen on the side of Facebook, to even the cup of soda we buy at McDonald’s. Away the most predominant types of advertisement that have become normalized to society according to Kilbourne are sexual by explicit advertisement. Kilbourne writes, “Sex in advertising is more about disconnection and distance than connection and closeness” which she is referring to the interaction between men and women (575). She also writes that many of the sexual advertisements have the same main goal as pornography, to show power over someone else, generally male dominance with women (575). This one aspect of sex in advertising opens the viewer’s eyes to the horrid outcome that may appear due to the vulgar ads. In Figure three, we see an Adidas logo at the bottom, but the majority of our time focusing on the ad is probably on examining a woman’s underwear wrapped around her ankles. Clearly, one can figure the advertisement is trying to say, if one wears Adidas shoes then he’ll be able to