The Ideal Consumer is someone who is constantly dissatisfies, constanly needs more and more products in order to feel better.
Jean KilbourneRead
Woman’s bodies continue to be dismembered in advertising. Over and over again just one part of the body is used to sell products, which is one of the most dehumanizing thing you can do to someone. Not only is she a thing, but just one part of that thing is focused on.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights how advertising objectifies women by focusing on their body parts rather than their whole selves, leading to dehumanization.
Jean Kilbourne's quote critiques the advertising industry's tendency to reduce women's identities to mere body parts, which perpetuates a culture of dehumanization. By emphasizing only specific parts instead of the whole individual, ads diminish women to objects used for commercial gain, stripping them of their humanity and complexity. This reflection invites a deeper discussion about the impact of media representations on societal views of women and their self-worth.
Themes
AdvertisingObjectificationDehumanizationWomenMediaIdentity
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about body image and self-esteem, one might quote Kilbourne to emphasize the harmful effects of advertising on women.
More from Jean Kilbourne
All quotes →Turning a human being into a thing is almost always the first step towards justifying violence against that person.
Jean KilbourneRead
Similar quotes
...he did not want me to seek the whys, because there are some things that happen for which we can formulate no whys, for which whys simply do not exist and, perhaps, are not necessary.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRead
.. that which renders morality an active principle and constitutes virtue our happiness, and vice our misery: it is probable, I say, that this final sentence depends on some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in the whole species.
David HumeRead
If nothing were substituted for everything, it would still be too much and too little.
Maurice BlanchotRead
Rich Mullins was the uneasy conscience of Christian music. He didn't live like a star. He'd taken a vow of poverty so that what he earned could be used to help others.
Amy GrantRead
Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?
Douglas AdamsRead
...if we know God our knowledge of... everything will be brought to perfection, and, in so far as is possible, the infinite, divine and ineffable dwelling place (cf. Jn. 14:2) will be ours to enjoy. For this is what our sainted teacher said in his famous philosophical aphorism: 'Then we shall know as we are known' (I Cor. 13:12), when we mingle our god-formed mind and divine reason to what is properly its own and the image returns to the archetype for which it now longs.
Pope DionysiusRead