Kilbourne show students dark side of advertisment
Every day, a person is exposed to more than 3,000 advertisements and will spend three years of his or her life watching only television commercials.
Internationally known lecturer and researcher Jean Kilbourne discussed the pervasiveness of advertising and its influence Tuesday night.
Kilbourne’s presentation about the “deadly persuasion” of advertising kicked off the 25th anniversary of women’s week at NDSU, as well as unveiled the newly remodeled Memorial Union Ballroom.
Attacking the advertising industry, Kilbourne displayed many ads, interpretatng how the portrayal was flawed.
“We all know that ads often lie, but no where is that more obvious than in cigarette ads,” Kilbourne said, referring to a cigarette advertisement featuring the slogan, “Alive with pleasure.” “We have all these young, healthy people ‘alive with pleasure,’ which I’m sure beats ‘dead with cancer’ as a slogan.”
Addressing Marlboro cigarettes, Kilbourne said men often associate their masculinity with the cigarette, despite the fact that cigarettes have linked to lower testosterone, sterility and impotence.
“So much for your Marlboros. But I guess we couldn’t expect truth in advertising, could we?” Kilbourne said, as the audience chuckled at an imaginary Marlboro advertisement that featured its signature cowboy smoking a flaccid cigarette and a slogan that read, “Smoking causes impotence.”
Kilbourne also discussed how women are targeted by advertisements and how society believes in a flawed ideal of beauty.
“Women learn from a very early age to spend enormous amounts of time, energy and above all, money, striving to achieve this ideal and feeling ashamed and guilty when we fail,” Kilbourne said. “And failure is inevitable because the ideal is based on absolute flawlessness.”
Kilbourne pointed out how the ideal of feminine beauty is not acquired naturally, but rather through airbrushing, cosmetics and digital retouching.
The poster for “Pretty Woman” flashed on screen, and Kilbourne said many people assumed it was Julia Roberts on the advertisement.
However, Roberts’ body wasn’t good enough, Kilbourne said, so a body double was used in the advertisement and in the film.
Another example was the picture of Katie Couric that CBS digitally shaved 20 pounds off the news anchor.
Glamorizing thinness has taken its toll on young girls, Kilbourne said. Twenty years ago, models weighed 8 percent less than the average woman.
Today, models weigh 23 percent less. And the coveted v-shaped body that models possess excludes 95 percent of all women, Kilbourne said.
Acknowledging the rising epidemic of obesity, Kilbourne said the solution will not come from forcing young girls to starve themselves, but rather changing attitudes about eating and exercising.
Kilbourne also focused on alcohol advertising. Every year, $3 billion is spent on alcohol advertising, she said.
The majority of the advertisements are targeted at young adults, Kilbourne said.
Most alcohol advertisements are lying when they encourage people to “drink responsibly,” Kilbourne said, because the industry would lose money if people actually did that.
If people practiced low-risk drinking — which stipulates men can have two drinks a day and women can have one — alcohol advertising sales would be cut by 80 percent.
Kara Stack, co-chair of the women’s week committee with Laura Oster-Aaland, said she had seen videos of Kilbourne speak before, so she knew what to expect from the presentation.
“And I wasn’t disappointed,” Stack said. “She had a lot to tell … and she got into some different issues I hadn’t heard her talk about.”
Stack said Kilbourne — who has spoken at nearly half of the colleges and universities in the United States — is in high demand as a lecturer.
New York Times magazine named her one of the top three most popular speakers on U.S. campuses last month.
Once Kilbourne was booked to speak at NDSU, Stack said a venue needed to be found to accommodate the audience.
Stack worked with Associate Director of Operations in the Memorial Union Chris Suriano to assure the ballroom would be ready for Tuesday’s event.
“(The ballroom) is amazing,” Stack said. “The staff … (was) working on it all day.”
Kilbourne’s newest book, “Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel,” is available at the Varsity Mart.