Mission Impossible

I thought Jean Kilbourne's documentary was an accurate analysis of how advertisements affect the public. Her research was more focused on women, because women tend to be targeted and more affected by ads than men. Wolf stresses that products sell "by making women feel as guilty as possible" (96). Ads make women they aren't good enough and give them something to strive for by promoting perfection.



Women are expected to be the impossible:

• Emaciated models covering billboards are telling women to be a size zero, while Victoria's Secret campaigns tell women they should have D cups. As Kilbourne says, these two body types are incompatible. A 5'10" woman weighing 100 pounds is not going to have a curvaceous figure. Because it is not natural, women are turing to plastic surgery to achieve this "ideal look." Kilbourne stresses that the majority of models with large busts have had plastic surgery.  
• Photoshop is the more popular way to enhance images. Supposedly "flawless" models are edited to give them longer legs, smaller torsos, bigger breasts, and spotless skin. These images are then plastered on billboards, setting the standard for beauty. Real women are encouraged to look like artificial computer generated images, which is clearly an unrealistic aspiration.
• Constant weight loss ads are telling women to stay thin because fat is unattractive. Women are made to feel guilty about indulging in food. Wolf discusses a woman's options by saying, "women make the same distinction today, between eating to sustain life, and eating for pleasure" (98). However, at the same time as eating is discouraged, food ads have become more and more enticing. Society in part with the media is teasing women, as though they want to see women fail. 
• All kinds of advertisements have women in suggestive poses, while promoting virginity. The ad below is one of the images shown in the movie. How is a woman expected to be innocent and sexy at the same time? Not only are these ads infantilizing women, but they are also telling women to exhibit contradicting mannerisms at the same time.

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/tag/perfumecologne/

• Wolf highlights another impossible challenge for women: dressing for work. Wolf says, "the beauty myth blocks each path so that no woman can 'look right'' (38). She goes on to give examples of court cases where women were scrutinized for being too ugly and not feminine enough and criticized for being too pretty and too feminine. When it comes to dressing and presenting oneself in a work environment, women cannot win. There is a 100% chance that women will be wrong.