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Slim Hopes: Advertising and the Obsession with Thinness.
Northampton, MA: Media Education Foundation, 1995. 30 min. $250.00 and $215 nonacademic.
Slim Hopes is Jean Kilbourne's third illustrated video lecture on gender stereotypes in advertising (the others being Killing Us Softly: Advertising's Image of Woman and Still Killing Us Softly). In this newest video, Kilbourne addresses an unseen studio audience and demonstrates that there is an ideal woman portrayed in media advertising. However, she concludes that this ideal is unattainable because the ideal body type is genetically thinner than 95 % of women, and many of the images have been air brushed and/or computer enhanced.
Further, the ideal is harmful because it creates an anxiety about weight which focuses upon unnatural thinness rather than health. The image persists, however, because it is profitable to cigarette manufacturers (who base their advertising on weight control and stress relief) and the diet industry. Anxiety about weight is further exacerbated by women's magazines which promote diets and food...