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Still Killing us Softly by Jean Kilbourne gives us prime examples of how the media tries to influence the way we see our soci
Still Killing us Softly by Jean Kilbourne gives us prime examples of how the media tries to influence the way we see our society. The advertisement examples that she gives show how they portray the ideal woman as young, thin and beautiful, as well as making all men to look like powerful and insensitive animals (which they aren’t). Both of the distortions use pathos as their persuasive devises by evoking emotion in the consumers to cause them to buy their product.In almost all advertisements with the exception of Depends and Polydent, all the models are probably not over twenty-five. This may have worked in the 1930’s when, according the American Academy of Anti-Aging, the life expectancy was thirty-five. However, that is not the case today, when the average person living in America is predicted to live to 85. The media is entirely misrepresenting the average person just to make it look as if you use their product; your age will be preserved. This causes many consumers to become disheartened and want to look younger.Another marketing strategy is to use models that are tall and slender. By doing this in clothing ads they lure the consumer into thinking that it is the clothes that are making them look that perfect, when actually, it’s for the most part camera tricks and a lot of starvation. Advertisers often use fear tactics, or slippery slope to scare the women into thinking that their product is the only thing keeping them from being overweight. Most often these cases are found in weight loss pills and appetite suppressants that show before and after pictures of someone who has successfully used their product.Have you ever seen a model in an ad for beauty products or a clothing store that was not completely gorgeous? It makes pretty good sense doesn’t it? Who would want to buy clothing worn by plain or even ugly people? I find myself falling into this superficial trap every time I look at the circulars in the Sunday paper. I want to look as perfect as they do, and sometimes think that by wearing their clothes, my looks will improve. However it does not take me long to realize how ridiculous I sound.
Women buy cosmetics for the same reason, to improve their looks, plain and simple. They want a product that brings out their features and accentuates their beauty. However, these models do not represent the majority of the skin types or complexions of women. In fact these models do not even have this perfect skin, rather it’s a product of meticulous airbrushing, but few consumers take that into account. Most just become envious of these models and kick themselves for that one night they were too lazy to take off their makeup.
Men are also labeled in the media. Most male models have a commanding and powerful sense of style. They always look in shape whether they are in a three-piece suit or in jogging shorts and a tank top. Particularly in men’s cologne commercials the men are always handsome and have an ideal body. Just as women are looked at like sex object in some advertisements, women equally gawk at men. Both sexes, to a certain extent, enjoy attention from the opposite sex. These ads cause the consumer to see life through the eyes of theses models and they conclude that if it looks good on the models, then it must look good on them. Once again Pathos, that little trick Cicero thought was so important, prevails (322). After hearing what Kilbourne has to say, the consumer is ultimately disgusted with him or herself. However, this is good thing! We recognize how advertisers use pathos to evoke emotions of unsatisfaction about the way we look, and strive to become perfect by using their products. After these realizations the consumer is less likely to fall into the advertisers pitfall and more likely to conceive their motives.
Stigmatization A subject of Seven Statues
Stigmatization: A subject of Seven Statues
Name
Institutional Affiliation
Date
Stigmatization
Abstract
In reference to Man’s divergent lifestyle, the aspect of social-stigmatization has gained subsequent influence in the contemporary mind of a common philosopher. This speculation specifies that, man may not be subject to racial, gender or classist dogmatization. Based on this approach, the commencing research will appoint Rosenblum and Travis (2003) arguments in relation to the subject being pursued by this research. The study will attempt to prove that; stigmatization can be extinguished if the society adopts liberal ideologies of equality. Further to this, the study will assess in detail the seven statues speculated by Rosenblum and Travis.
Explain the meaning of stigma.
According to Rosenblum and Travis (2003), stigmatization, is a comprehensive agenda that affect the stigmatized person and the initiator of the stigma doctrine. A stigmatized person is one who socially identifies with members to a given social category. This calls for the question of his or her full humanity. The stigmatized person naturally feels devalued, flawed and spoiled in his eyes and others. From a critical perspective, the stigma is applied to enroll a social culture of aversion, threat and dehumanization and sometimes depersonalization of other and eventually leads to the development of stereotypic caricatures. Thus, in reference to the book, stigmatization is interpersonal, social and personal systems, which are costly.
Statutes of Stigmatized status
Race
Rosenblum and Travis as one of the controversial theories of the aggregate social theory have established race as a crucial aspect of stigmatization. In fact, a significant feature in the race theory values the experiences of oppressed groups as those suggestive in a methodology to create an opposition of consciousness that happens to be a dominant ideology. In relation to racism, one will notice the complex terminology associated with income, wealth, and social mobility. In any case, it is difficult to define a given terminology related to race since after all the consent of class will emerge with more accurate reflection on social and economic factors of an individual merits.
Sex
Rosenblum and Travis have defined sexual orientation as master of statuses has been established as a conveyance of prestige. In social science literature, it is necessary to assess the extent at which sexuality occupies an individual cognitive ability. In the debate of sexuality, master of statuses is those, which in most and all situations overpowers and dominate other statuses. In fact, individuals construct their identities by giving a higher priority to one individual’s statues over another by using sex as a common modifier. A close example is a political campaign between a Man from a minor race, against a woman from a major race. The electorate will naturally vote for the Man.
Gender
Another controversial point of stigmatization is the gender. In fact, gender forms a basic fabric of the social theory, which prompts a group of experiences and challenges, created to foster methodologies of ensuring a standpoint will lead to a group knowledge and standpoint that are essential to a given social situation. According to Rosenblum and Travis gender, is a complex analysis that focuses on the critical orientation of class and gender to analyze the impact of a given society? In fact, gender is a social construction, which refers to hormonal, physiological, and chromosomal that defines differences between males and females.
Social Class
Similarly, social class forms the fabric of a given society. Social class focuses in revealing the ignored realities of the class positions. In American society, the debate of Social Class remains a contentious subject in the American culture. Rosenblum and Travis (2003) argue that the social class is a seldom-discussed subject and its vocabulary seeks to examine the significance evasive nature of social class in American society. Consequently, the inability to understand the social impact of social class is a crucial factor that sociologists should examine consequently.
Ethnicity
In response to the ethnicity stance, Rosenblum and Travis (2003) argues that despite the coexistence of oppression and privilege within any person, stigma is strong and pervasive in the society and oppression can extinguish privileges of one status. In any case, the presence of a given situation will naturally delegitimize an intersection of ethnicity.
Social Disability
Rosenblum and Travis (2003) argue that the continuous transcription social disability has with time evolved to given sense of social identity. Further to this, members are prescribed in a dominant sense of social identity. In other words, the degrees, of gradations and variation within the social group will naturally vary based on the nature of transcription.
Perceptions and Group
In response to the social principles constructed by Rosenblum and Travis (2003), there are several social constructs that individuals groups are inclined to. From the readings, one will notice the optimal preoccupation of ethnicity and gender status. Consequently, there is a collective analysis of chances of equality in the society. Rosenblum and Travis (2003) further argue that despite the collective coexistence of both oppression and privilege within the oppression and given individual. As part of the evolutionary theory, group perception; for instance, health, economic and inequality will access that the man is inclined to a given set of disciplines, which are irrevocable. Based on this, there are emerging factors related to the intersections of class, gender and ethnicity.
Essentialist Perspective
Primarily, the social constructionist perspectives are contrasted with an essentialist perspective that is inherent in social ideologies. Essentialism assumes that there are categories of all members of a given category that human beings tend to share. Man acts on a given social fabric, which is not subject to instigations of a given class or society. This report elects the essentialist perspective, based on its role of fabricating a given society. In this case, it should be noted that social constructionist agenda could not be separated from a culture that attempts to ignore a given consequence of social thesis. By far large, social differences can only be applied to explain the differences between people and not the concepts of classism, sexism, gender or ethnicity.
References
Rosenblum, K. E. (2003). The meaning of difference: American constructions of race, sex and
gender, social class, and sexual orientation : a text/reader (3rd ed.). Boston, Mass.: McGraw-Hill.
Stewart is among the few African
Stewart is among the few African-American women born in 1831 and able to develop literature on the plight of the African American women. Having been orphaned at the age of 5, she is raised in a clergy man’s home, and she struggles to gather the isolated fragments of education to acquaint herself with education. Having been born in an era where the Africa-Americans had no place in the society, she is challenged by the notion that she should remain buried behind the iron kettles in the kitchen forcing her to become radical and pursue education at all costs. The book is a major reflection of the struggle that she faces to regain her voice. She details of how her life as a child had changed dramatically in a manner that she did not understand herself. She further notes that people started viewing her in another despising dimension, as she grew older and more radical. She was often assaulted, until she eventually realized that being a working class African-American made her a lesser being as compared to those who were not African-Americans. She became smaller and eventually grew silent.
In her life, she challenged the African-American women to reject the negative images that are portrayed of the black identity noting that race, gender and class oppression is the major cause of their poverty. She deals with the Instability associated with the black identity by requiring of the black women to forge their own self-definitions, self-reliance and thus acquire independence. She adds that, it is useless for the black women to remain seated and let the whites make an evaluation of them based on their own stereotypes. She adds that women must Possess the spirit of independence as well as that of men, that she described as bold, enterprising, heavily undaunted, fearless (p. 53).
Moreover, she expresses that, there is every reason to pursue the rights and privileges and be acquainted of a reason as to why they cannot enjoy them. She notes that it is possible that one will die in the process but asserts that it is definite that one will die if they do not pursue the course. She emphasizes that women should use their special roles as mothers in the society and develops mechanisms of action. She is asserts, “O, ye mothers, what a responsibility rests on you!” she adds that it is upon the mothers to create certain mind-sets of their sons and daughters, such that they are thirsty for knowledge, love, virtue, as well as cultivation of a pure heart. She asks them not to say that they cannot make anything of their children, but urges them to say they will try (p.35).
Historically, we note that Stewart was among the first U. S black feminists who championed for unity among the African-American women by providing an avenue for women activism and self-determination. She notes that, at the time, the black women were thought to have no ambition or force. She argues the black women should get united and fund themselves so that in a period that she approximates to be about one and a half years, they have the ability to build their own high school. The above noted is one of the many ways that the author widely uses in dealing with instability in the black diaspora identity. Collective action is the main strategy that she emphasizes on, as a method to deal with the stereotypes and problems of the African-American women.
“Turn your attention to knowledge and improvement; for knowledge is power” (p. 41). She notes that education is another major away in which the African-American women must adopt in order to win the struggle. Remembering earlier, she notes that women should take action and create thirst for knowledge in their sons and daughters. It is evident that Stewart has a passion for education and views it as being another major strategy that would free the blacks. On (p. 31), she notes that she is aware of the sexual plight suffered by the African-American women at the time and, therefore, she sympathetically pleads with them noting, “ I plead the cause of virtue and the pure principles of morality”. For the whites who held the stereotype and mind-set that Africans are inferior, Stewart delivered a bitter response noting, “Our souls are fired with the same love of liberty and independence with which your souls are fired. . . . too much of your blood flows in our veins, too much of your colour in our skins, for us not to possess your spirits”(p. 40).
The author presents the African-American woman as an obscured person. Williams mentions “The coloured girl is not known and hence not believed in; she belongs to a race that is best designated by the term ‘problem,’ and she lives beneath the shadow of that problem which envelops and obscures her.” It is imperative that in this setting, the African female has no platform on which she can express herself due to the reason that she is obscured by her identity crisis. Stewart documents this as among the reasons as to why feminist literature did not surface in the past but just now.
It is imperative that according to Stewart, most of the African American women were brought into the united states as slaves and thus, race, class, gender, sexuality, nation, age, and ethnicity are the major forms of oppression that were faced at the time. At the time, the African-American women’s oppression, according to the author were classified into three interdependent dimensions. The first is exploitation of the black women’s labour that is well represented by a record of living in the ghetto, a strong symbol of economic alienation and instability. Political oppression is also a major problem that faced the black women. The black women could not enjoy most of the rights enjoyed by the white males (p. 56). For example, they had no right to vote, work in public office, or obtain justice.
Controlling images were used against the black women as another form of oppression. The oppressors used certain qualities that are attached to the black women as a symbol of their acceptance of oppression. The author notes the use of mammies, jezebels, pancake mix boxes as well as photos of black prostitutes (p. 5). When used together, the three measures were a web of economy that was setup to depict a polity, and ideological function, which was a highly effective social control system that kept the African–American women on a subordinate position (p.5). When we look into the original authoring of the book, we realize that the book is authored in a mixture of social and historical context especially where she explains that, the book reflects her struggle to regain her voice. She explains that she has been in a constant struggle to replace the external definitions that are developed by the stereotypes groups with her own self-defined viewpoint. The second factor is that she places the black women’s ideas at the centre of her analysis. On this note, she embraces the thought that the black feminists are put at a state of being listened to if only what they aim at saying is pleasant to the oppressor’s ears. It is thus apparent that the message often ends up distorted and the original intent lost. Therefore, she writes in an environment that does not favour the radical point of view and acknowledges that she does not write for fame. She writes to ensure the information reach as many readers as possible. Thirdly, in her work, she includes an array of quotations from African America women thinkers bringing a sense of diversity, richness, and power in the black women’s ideas.
In conclusion, the author deals with the evils that come with the African diasporic identity by encouraging the women to get united and fight for their rights. More importantly, she emphasizes on the importance of education and develops a school of thought that, there is the need to create a thirst for knowledge among the younger generation. The development of this literature is amid the era of the slave trade where women were required to serve at home attending to household chores. They were often associated with kettles and other household chores as that was the only place for them. At this point in time, they were not allowed to vote nor participate in the labour force especially in the formal employment. Continuous discrimination and harassment was common among the African-American women who had a tendency to do well, as they had to be reminded of their ‘Place’ in the society.