The Jean Kilbourne convocation speech was really fantastic, though I was surprised that it didn't deal more with body image and the expectations women are made to live up to. Yes, alcohol and cigarette advertising is atrocious, but as Kilbourne said, the advertising is really geared towards the addicts. Whereas the way that society presents women and body image affects virtually everyone.
The portion she did discuss body image was fantastic! She brought up important issues that everyone should really be aware of in today's society, such as how photoshop has taken the place of using real women's bodies for advertisements and how, due to the over sexualization of the woman body, the body is sometimes used as an object (i.e. date rape, pornography, etc). The overuse of photoshop vaguely reminded me of The Business of Being Born. Most labors happen in hospitals, where the use of synthetic hormones are used to speed the process along, for women's bodies aren't apparently good enough or prepared to give birth on their own. The same thing is true for the female body in advertising: the natural appearance of a woman's body, no matter how thin or curvy or porcelain or ethnic her body is, will never be good enough to appear in a magazine. The body has to be manipulated using photoshop and other computer technology in order to be worthy of an advertisement. Kilbourne's examples drove home the absurdity of the expectations a woman's body must meet. When power over the body is being taken away from women, there is a real problem in our world.
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