Who's 'Killing Me Softly'?

"“In providing a dream language of meritocracy (“get the body you deserve”, “a gorgeous figure doesn’t come without effort”, entrepreneurial spirit (“make the most of your natural assets”)…keep women consuming their advertisers’ products in pursuit of the total personal transformation in status that the consumer society offers men in the form of money” (29).

 After watching ‘Killing me Softly”, narrated by 
Jean Kilbourne, I was shocked that their were was no higher authority that could do something about how women are being degraded in pop culture today. Moreover, the advertisements that she explores reinforce ‘unrealistic, and unhealthy, perceptions of beauty, perfection, and sexuality’. Contemporary pop culture has augmented and strengthened the beauty myth and installed it into the minds of children at a dangerously young age. “Women’s magazines for over a century have been one of the most powerful agents for changing the women’s roles, and throughout that time-today more than ever- they have consistently glamorized whatever the economy, their advertisers, and, during the wartime, the government, needed at that moment from women”(64). It makes me feel frightened that people who we are supposed to trust control women for economic reasons. There’s a lot to say about advertisers and pop culture these days, and looking into the future it doesn’t look like the beauty myth will last a very long time. Since 1991 clubs have been using a certain method to employ waitresses. “The club’s employment standards ranked waitresses on the following scale”:

1.     A flawless beauty (face, figure, and grooming)

2.     An exceptional beautiful girl

3.     Marginal (is aging or has developed a correctable appearance problem)

4.     Has lost Bunny Image (either through aging or an uncorrectale appearance problem)

Sadly, not much has changed today. Whether you are looking through magazines, dining at fancy restaurants, or even strolling through an office building, you will see that the women who are usually standing on the front desk, or waitressing tables all try to reach this flawless beauty’ that is sold to women through cosmetics, which in the end are unattainable. Scarily, some women “…will buy more things if they are kept in the self- hating, ever-failing, and sexually insecure state of being aspiring beauties” (66). The figures speak for themselves: “in 1988 skin care grossed 3 billion in the United States alone, 337 million pounds in the United Kingdom, 8.9 trillion lire in Italy, and 69.2 million guilders in the Netherlands, up from 18.3 million in 1978”(109). The amount of products sold to women is increasing annually, as well as the amount of women going out to get facial, body and breast surgery. “…95% of enrolees in weight loss programs are women” (94).

 

This system and the existence of the beauty currently remain intact because these magazines “offer women power” and in return “promote masochism” (77).

Therefore when “our eyes are trained to see time as a flaw on a women’s faces where it is a mark of character on a men’s” the myth lives on (94). In a world where “beauty is heaven or a state of grace; the skin or fat cell count is the soul; ugliness is hell” and “the beauty product is her mediator: healer, angel or spiritual guide”, women are forced into buying and doing what the advertisers want them to do. In killing me softly women are go through extreme diets that make them loose weight at the expense of their health. If you …”tell a women she is ugly [that] can make her feel ugly, act ugly, and, as far as her experience is concerned, be ugly, in the place where feeling beautiful keeps her whole” (36). Advertisers, fashion designers and the whole beauty industry rely on women’s submissiveness and credulousness to survive.