I am not a feminist, but I am a Christian

Tuesday night, instead of going to my Critical and Cultural Theories class, we were required to attend a showing of a feminist film titled, Killing Us Softly 4. Needless to say, I was less than thrilled. However, the film was not terrible. (I found the first 5mins on YouTube, and it suffices in getting the point across.) It was basically a recording of this woman giving a presentation on the way women are portrayed in advertising. We were asked to write a critique of the film, and I just thought I'd share a few of my revelations with the blog world.



Please, don't misunderstand me. I so do not consider myself a feminist; however, I am a Christian, and the way women are portrayed in our media is not Biblical, and contrary to what some may believe, Christianity does not work to subordinate women to men. In fact, we see a woman who works and takes care of her family in Proverbs 31, Eve was created as a helper to Adam, not a slave, and finally we see in multiple instances in the New Testament concerning the roles of women and men within marriage (for examples, see Eph. 5, Col. 3, 1 Peter 3, etc.). If you notice, whenever there is mention of wives being submissive, it is to their husbands (not all men everywhere) and there is a following commandment specifically for the husbands, which is to be loving, respectful, and honoring. Now that is clarified, here is a little bit of my paper.
SDG

It appears that Kilbourne was very perceptive in recognizing that there is a growing problem in the manner that women are portrayed in advertising and in the way that women are  advertised to. I am somewhat aware that women are inaccurately portrayed in advertising, being a mass communication student, but I had no idea the specifics or extent. For example, her discussion of the dismemberment of women's bodies which leads to the interpretation of women as an object, not an individual. Kilbourne also mentioned that this objectification is the first step in abuse, which I had not considered. Secondly, she discussed that women are often advertised to in a way that suggests food as a substitute for a relationship and are described in sexual terms. For example the ad with a picture of a cookie with the copy that reads, "Your lips look lonely. May I keep them company?" Women and sexuality have become so synonymous, that now our food needs to be sexy!

Kilbourne made me aware that some of my presuppositions of femininity might have origins in our culture’s advertisements, especially in relation to aspects of my appearance. I believe Kilbourne put it as something similar to always being plucked and shaved. It especially rang true when she brought up an ad featuring a girl with a flawless face and exclaimed, “In fact, she has no pores!” That really brought to light the unrealistic standard being pushed on women by the media.

I would like to consider the possibility that these images of women have become so separated from real life women, that the images only exist as representations of themselves, not as representations of real woman. In other words, the sign, a woman’s image, signifies not living, breathing woman, but something completely other in the audiences’ mind. I would speculate that for some, because they are aware of the way images are created and manufactured in the media, they know that what they are looking at is not representative of the thing they know as a woman, and so, a new signified (media woman, if you will) is created. This may be a stretch, or trying to give our society the benefit of the doubt, but I feel like that is my mind’s process when comparing mediated images of women to the real women in my life and find that the two do not coincide.