{"id":50722,"date":"2012-08-30T13:12:35","date_gmt":"2012-08-30T18:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=50722"},"modified":"2017-09-17T15:14:53","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T20:14:53","slug":"media-subordination-in-killing-us-softly-silencing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/08\/30\/media-subordination-in-killing-us-softly-silencing\/","title":{"rendered":"Media Subordination in “Killing Us Softly”: Silencing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sociological Images owes a great debt to\u00a0Jean Kilbourne<\/a>, a pioneer in the feminist critique of advertising. \u00a0She’s most famous, probably, for her video series, Killing Us Softly<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

In those videos, she offers a typology of ways that women are subordinated in media content. \u00a0One of those is silencing<\/em>. \u00a0Sometimes this means actually covering a woman’s mouth (forcibly, but also playfully), other times copy simply says that she need not (or shouldn’t) speak. \u00a0Below are a series of images we’ve collected that illustrate this. \u00a0Some of them are dated, but they give you an idea of what the mechanism of silencing looks like.<\/p>\n

Canada’s Next Top Model (Cycle 3), sent along by Julie C., included a photoshoot<\/a> in which the models’ mouths were covered with duct tape.<\/p>\n

Erin S. sent in a link to a set of fashion photos in\u00a0New York Magazine<\/em><\/a>\u00a0that show faceless women.<\/p>\n

Reanimated Horse sent us an American Apparel ad in which the woman’s body is highlighted but her face is obscured:<\/p>\n

\"-1\"<\/p>\n

The next two ads are examples of one’s that suggest that women need not speak, that products can speak for them.<\/p>\n

“Eye contact is speaking without words”:
\n\"capture111\"<\/p>\n

“Make a statement without saying a word”:
\n\"capture221\"<\/p>\n

Finally,\u00a0Sarah B.<\/a> sent along a form of resistance to these kinds of images. \u00a0Colin von Heuring<\/a>, who just started a brand new blog on media subversion,\u00a0saw an ad with the copy \u00a0“You don’t need words to make a statement.” \u00a0He\u00a0decided to “ma[k]e it explicit” (original on the left, modified on the right):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For more on Jean Kilbourne and the subordination of women in advertising, here’s the trailer to Killing Us Softly 4<\/em>:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sociological Images owes a great debt to\u00a0Jean Kilbourne, a pioneer in the feminist critique of advertising. \u00a0She’s most famous, probably, for her video series, Killing Us Softly. In those videos, she offers a typology of ways that women are subordinated in media content. \u00a0One of those is silencing. \u00a0Sometimes this means actually covering a woman’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[279,55,2093,2098,283],"class_list":["post-50722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-objectification","tag-gender","tag-gender-objectification","tag-gender-prejudicediscrimination","tag-prejudicediscrimination"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50722"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71545,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50722\/revisions\/71545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}