Wellesley College visiting scholar Jean Kilbourne, a widely published author and lecturer on alcohol and tobacco advertising and images in advertising, spoke to a packed house in Whitley Auditorium Oct. 23. Kilbourne showed slides and discussed advertisements for about an hour before taking questions from the audience.
Kilbourne told the crowd that the average American is exposed to 3,000 advertising messages a day and that people often think advertisements don’t affect them.
Calling nicotine the “deadliest drug” out there, Kilbourne explained her own struggle with smoking, which began when she was 13. She said the tobacco industry spends $8 billion a year on advertising and promotion. She called nicotine “an addiction that starts in childhood” and said that the industry still tries to convince young people that smoking is “cool.”
Kilbourne also spoke of how women are commonly portrayed as flawless in advertising. She said this image is “inhumanely perfect,” as these images are often altered or composed of several different women’s features. The danger, Kilbourne said, is that this flawlessness cannot be achieved except in advertising. “Women’s bodies haven’t changed,” she said. “What’s changed is the ideal.” She said women’s magazines often send mixed messages, such as an emphasis on health and ads that normalize behaviors such as bingeing.
Kilbourne also spoke about advertising by the alcohol industry. “College students in America spend more money on alcohol than they do on books,” she said. By creating a “climate of denial,” the alcohol industry is able to turn holidays such as Halloween into “drinking holidays,” she said.
Kilbourne encouraged students to look at the ads for themselves. “Ask yourselves who profits and who loses,” she said. Powerful industries want young people to define freedom as the right to drink and smoke, she said.
During the question-and-answer session, Kilbourne advised students to start thinking about these issues right away. “Raise these issues in classes now,” she said. “Think about the ethical issues.” She also encouraged students to start thinking of themselves as citizens instead of consumers.