Beyond Killing Us Softly: The Strength to Resist

Although I have to cringe when I hear "weightism" and "empowered" used in the same sentence, Margaret Lazarus and Renner Wunderlich's Beyond Killing Us Softly (not to be confused--although it certainly will be--with Media Education Foundation's Killing Us Softly III on the same topic) offers a scattershot, though at times compelling, overview of the pernicious effect of media images on adolescent girls and women. Drawing on academic lectures, interviews, and several advertising images, the program argues--semi-convincingly--that eating disorders are entirely culturally induced, suggesting that adolescent girls exposed to mainstream media are "literally weighing their self-esteem" by hopelessly questing for Barbie doll figures that are anatomically impossible. Pointing out that young people today are growing up in an image-based rather than print-based culture, one instructor exhorts her students to become media savvy, adopting a critical perspective toward beauty magazines, billboards, and TV commercials. Unfortunately, the program hurts its argument by absolutely avoiding any statement of the obvious: namely, that girls entering adolescence are undergoing a variety of psychological and physiological changes that may play a part in what one interviewee here cites as a mysterious loss of "self-confidence" between the age of 9 and, say, 15. (Boys share some of this same lack of "self-confidence"--it's called discovering the opposite sex, and it has more to do with biology than media conglomerates.) After making some telling comments (the observation that feminists encouraged women to expand their space, while advertising pressures them to reduce it, is fairly astute), the video takes a rather sudden detour into the subject of pornography (here very narrowly, and inaccurately, defined as sexualizing violence against women), pointing out the increasing number of images of bondage and submission in contemporary advertising. I don't mean to play devil's advocate--especially since I absolutely agree with some of the fundamental precepts advanced here--but, ultimately, Beyond Killing Us Softly is a loosely arranged pastiche of interviews with a few undotted "i's" and uncrossed "t's." Still, this would make a good discussion starter in junior high, senior high and academic settings. A strong optional purchase. Aud: J, H, C. (R. Pitman)