In our culture, our standards for how women must look and act are important to us. So important that they’ve become damaging to our well-being. Women have no way of escaping being judged on what they wear or how they do their hair. There is no “regular†female, free of standards, unlike a male. Nowadays, media and even language have influenced our ideals for gender conventions, mostly unconsciously. Pressure on females to fit into these conventions is higher than ever.Media—ads, television, movies, magazines, and celebrities—is something we cannot escape. It surrounds us almost every minute of every day. Involuntarily, the average American sees “3000 ads in a day, and spends 2 years of their life watching television commercials (Kibourne). †The disadvantages of female conventions have become bigger than ever before, and have come to driving women to extremes. Killing Us Softly 4 by Jean Kilbourne is a remarkably eye-opening documentary about how media affects our values, concepts, and ideals. As I’ve already stated, we cannot run away from advertising.
