Nowadays marketing through TV shows or commercials is everything, seeing as less and less people are reading magazines ,books, and newspapers. This has also given rise to a very special type of advertising called " pornographic advertising " which caters towards more of the male population, because if it has a attractive or "sexy" girl on it then its more likely to attract attention as well as purchases. They're are plenty of different examples of this such as music album covers, or book titles and stories, or movies or TV shows. however what we will be discussing today is an of this Hardees advertisement. This intern has many many examples of Kilbourne's thoughts and concerns.
In this Hardees commercial the opening shot starts out with a assumed nude women walking down the street with her turning men's heads. The narrator then proceeds to describe the item the company is trying to sell, which is and all natural beef burger. Throughout the commercial there are some very suggestive visuals which is comparing the burger with the women's breasts as well as other things which are represented in the video. At the end of it, it revels the woman to be in a swimsuit or some kind of cheerleading uniform, as she pulls out the merchandise that Hardees is trying to push meaning the burger. Right here in this ad alone we have three or maybe more points of what Killborne's article and film goes over, and those more obvious, or more impactful three being; Pornogaphic imagery, objectification, and Relationships between people(or in is case gender).
The comparison of the burger to women is aimed to appeal more towards men, so with this kind of advertising Hardees have already selected an audience through this method. However this doesn't only attract the male gender, this can attract almost anyone depending on the person. Studies show that if an attractive person is selling an item people will be more likely to buy whatever there selling.
Hardees is also very much stereotypes the roles that men and women have in association with each other, which is something killbrone goes over a few times in their article. This is called objectification which Essentially means a person (gender) is thought of in one very specific way, close to a stereotype.
However the relationship between male and female genders is very complicated, and can differ between each individual person. However the advertisement take that relationship and only views it a very specific way, which is not just objectifying women, but to men as well. The way it interoperates the females is they're being "Loose" or "scandalous", and the males as "sex crazed" or "inept", and that's what Hardees bases they're commercials on. When society objectifies people to this to long it then there for becomes a stereotype. After that it can be almost impossible for that stereotype to not be the first thing people see when they look at someone.
Even so the amount of ad's, shows, books, or even games, everything will always have something like this apart of it. Especially in current events today can easily be compared to Kilbourne's work and how relevant it is in our society today, it can be used in a lot of way to explain things such as; sexual innuendos, ideas, or things that are implied but however unspoken for. Kilbourne's work can be used to teach regular people about how unreasonable or unacceptable some of these advertisements are. If Killborne was around today she would most likely be appalled at the way our society turned out and how far off course everything is from how she envisioned it or wanted it to be, but thats how writing is, everyone has their own view point on what should happen when, and what should happen wear. People need to be more knowledgeable about these kinds of things so then the world could perhaps be just a little less harsh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skTHCPJn4YM
Kilbourne, Jean. "Three Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt." Rereading America. Eds. Colombo, Cullen, Lisle. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's P. 2013.
Killing Us Softly 4. Perf. Jean Kilbourne. Dir. Sut Jhally. Media Education Foundation, 2011
https://www.peaksalesrecruiting.com/blog/how-important-are-looks-for-sales-professionals/