Killing Us Softly 4

Featuring Jean Kilbourne

In this new, highly anticipated updated of her pioneering Killing Us Softly series, the first in more than a decade, Jean Kilbourne takes a fresh look at how the advertising industry traffics in distorted and destructive ideals of femininity. The film marshals a range of new print and television advertisements to lay bare a stunning pattern of damaging gender stereotypes — images and messages that too often reinforce unrealistic and unhealthy perceptions of beauty, perfection, and sexuality. By bringing Kilbourne’s groundbreaking analysis up to date, Killing Us Softly 4 stands to challenge a new generation of students to take advertising seriously, and to think critically about popular culture and its relationship to sexism, eating disorders, and gender violence.

See the Media Education Foundation site for more information on Killing Us Softly 4 and to purchase the film.

“In today’s hypercommercialized media climate, Kilbourne’s main point — that advertising creates a toxic cultural environment in which sexual objectification, physical subjugation and intellectual trivialization of women has deep psychological and political resonance — is more compelling than ever.”
– Jennifer L. Pozner | Executive Director of Women in Media & News | Author of Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV