Download Talkington Justyne Talkington Kathy Rowley English 201

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Justyne Talkington
Kathy Rowley
English 201-12
October 10 2012
Rhetorical Analysis:
The Real Truth Behind Advertisement
Many may not dig in to dip to realize that many advertisements are a form of
pornography. In the article “Two Ways a Women Can get hurt”, she discusses the ways
to look at articles and find the true meaning to them. The author of this article is Jean
Kilbourn, who has earned her EdD. She is an award winning author and educator that
usually gets her academic ideas from her own personal experiences. She began
researching advertisements and then shaping them into lecture series and also made a
film called Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women, in 1979. Kilbourn comes
across knowledgeable and seems to be fair because she is never accusing advertisement
to be the actual cause of rape, beatings, and pornography. She just thinks that is a small
factor in those things. Many have criticized her for being to picky with the images she
chooses and think she is looking to deeply into the advertisements. As the speaker she has
a strong reputation that gives her authority, because of all the work she has done.
The main reason for Kilbourn in writing this article was to make people aware of
the deeper meaning of articles. She feels like young children and teens are being taught to
act older and more sexist. Also she feels that articles are degrading to women because it
insults women’s intelligence and self-esteem. Kilbourn says that not only are, articles
harmful for the younger generation, but there is a lot of pornography in advertising and it
dehumanizes and objectifies people, especially women. So, therefore her reason in
writing this article is to make people more aware of these advertisements and not to fall
for them.
The intention of her speaking is to attack the advertisement companies for being
sly with their advertisement, and making them into such pornographic and diminishing
images. She is trying to dissuade both the advertisement companies to not advertise with
such hurt, and also trying to dissuade the people to not fall for the ads. Kilbourn is
blaming advertising for making men think they are more powerful then women and also
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for having the rates of domestic violence go up. She does not blame it entirely on the
advertising companies but does think it plays a key role. Jean is not just teaching or
persuading, she is doing both in her article. She is teaching her audience how to look
deeper into articles and is also persuading them not to fall for the advertisements.
Next, the audience is not just intended for one group. She wants adults and teens
to read her article so they see the other side to advertisements. If one group had to be
specified it would be for young teen/young adult women because, they are the main ones
who are getting hurt from these ads. The values the audience of women hold, are that
they are not being treated equally and are getting discriminated against in these
advertisements. This article could have a secondary audience of anyone who is willing to
understand what she is saying and help discourage this sort of advertising.
In this essay Jean talks about how the ads are pornographic. The main goal of
pornography is to show power over one another (Kilbourne 459). Ads encourage male
violence and for men to be forceful and dominant, they make it seem that the value of
sexual intimacy is more than emotional intimacy. Also advertising encourages young
boys to want to turn into men that are shown in the ad, and makes women believe that
they should be attracted to the men in control and that are forceful. Many advertisements
are misleading and show that if a person is willing to have sexual intimacy one will get
great things from it. For example in Kilbournes article she uses a cigarette boat ad to
show that women are rewarded for ones sexuality by the man’s wealth. The ad has a
women saying while laying in a mans arms obviously after sex “ Does this mean I get a
ride in your Cigarette?” (Kilbourne 459) This type of advertising is considered
pornography because it uses poses and postures that you would use in something
pornographic. Advertising like this is insulting to women’s intelligence and self-esteem
because if they don’t look or act like the model in the ad then they wont get those things
shown, which everyone knows is not the case. Kilbourne uses logos in her article by
showing examples and pictures of the ads to help readers understand the point she is
making and so they can actually see what to look for in articles.
She uses pathos by giving examples of what’s going on around the world. For
example, as the case of a male Canadian judge who accused a three-year-old girl of being
sexually aggressive and suspended the case of her molester, the molester was allowed to
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go back to his old job of babysitting (Kilbourne 469). She used many cases like this to get
peoples emotions going, so they care more about what is going on in different types of
advertisements that they don’t see at first.
This genre of writing is an article. She uses the article because its short and people
will actually take time to read it, whereas if it were a book many people would think they
didn’t have the time. She uses an angry style to get her point across, and uses words such
as “pornographic” to get the reader to really understand what she is talking about.
Kailbourne does not sugar coat anything in her article and is straight to the point. Another
type of genre she could have used was a blog site, this would have been ideal because she
could have kept it updated with new articles that are coming out and her audience could
see if any changes have been made over time. A blog site also would have been better
because then it would have allowed her readers to communicate back with her about their
own thoughts and opinions on the advertisements she had been discussing. Although
using the article allows her to make her points clear without having people criticize her,
she is able to fulfill her intentions to her audience of women. She is able to speak
effectively and make points about current issues happening around the world.
Finally, the topic Kilbourne is discussing is very revealing about our culture and
shows that we should try to better our values and customs. It reveals that the advertising
company has low values to want to persuade young children to act older, or to teach men
to treat women disrespectfully. Advertisements these days make men feel like they are in
power and that sexual intimacy is all that matters. It makes young men feel like they have
the right to judge and touch young women. Then the women or girls feel like they cant
way anything about it because of what their peers will think. This then leads to suicide or
harming of oneself or even just makes girls feel self- conscious about their appearance.
Our culture is becoming worse and worse all the time in ways we present things and how
we teach young children to act.
The main point that Kilbourne is talking about in her article is that society needs
to be more careful with how they are advertising because not only is it degrading to
women, but also teaches young kids that it is ok to pose provocative and to use sexual
activity to get what you want. When children see it in ads they are going to assume that it
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is all right to do. Kilbourne has been criticized for digging to deep into advertisement but
all her facts show that we should start working on making advertising less pornographic.
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Works Cited
Greene, Stuart and April Lidinsky, eds. From Inquiry to Academic Writing. Boston:
Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. Print.
Kilbourne, Jean. “Two Ways a Women Can Get Hurt.” From Inquiry to Academic
Writing. Stuart Greene and April Lidinsky, eds. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008.
Print.