Jean Kilbourne: Killing Us Softly 4 - Advertizing's Image of Women

[#ruin]

made me laugh, where's that from?

[SuE]

made me laugh, where's that from?

Malcolm Evans

[viv1984viv]

the body entering into language is a process which could be much less violent. I feel there is an epidemic of unattainable heteronormative ideals. Of course this is good for business, but I'd like equalities to be built into the formatting. Killing Us Softly is an excellent lecture series, one of the few lectures I've re-watched.

Faust, your 4th paragraph, is that not quite pessimistic? That there will always be traditional gender roles of beauty and the beast? Also - I don't think the urge you mention is as natural as you think, consider deprivation studies. I think our subjectivities could find purple spotted coasters to be a sexualised ideal if our entire culture formatted our libido to do so. Sexualisation, beauty or attractiveness are not natural but engineered.

[Faust]

the body entering into language is a process which could be much less violent. I feel there is an epidemic of unattainable heteronormative ideals. Of course this is good for business, but I'd like equalities to be built into the formatting. Killing Us Softly is an excellent lecture series, one of the few lectures I've re-watched.

Faust, your 4th paragraph, is that not quite pessimistic? That there will always be traditional gender roles of beauty and the beast? Also - I don't think the urge you mention is as natural as you think, consider deprivation studies. I think our subjectivities could find purple spotted coasters to be a sexualised ideal if our entire culture formatted our libido to do so. Sexualisation, beauty or attractiveness are not natural but engineered.

I don't know - I wasn't trying to be pessimistic but merely making an observation. True, subjectivity can color an opinion. But I disagree with your last statement, and I think many others who don't have anthropology degree blinders on will too.

[Dorje]

I think our subjectivities could find purple spotted coasters to be a sexualised ideal if our entire culture formatted our libido to do so. Sexualisation, beauty or attractiveness are not natural but engineered.

For the most part, no... and science doesn't agree with you either.

Our perception of attractiveness is mostly something we are born with. Otherwise Christians would have found success trying to "cure" homosexuality. But the truth is people are born with a particular sexual inclination, and thus a particular idea of what's attractive to them.

Science has found attractiveness has to do with finding suitable partners in order to best perpetuate the human race. The way you look, smell, etc is likely to be attractive to another person with compatible genetics.

And I did say "for the most part" because I do believe there is SOME leeway for society to influence what we find attractive. But it's not going to produce any large shifts, just small ones imo. For example, there's plenty of guys who DO NOT like very thin women and I don't care how skinny the models become and how much it is being "engineered"... these guys are NEVER going to find skinny women attractive, sorry. And you're never going to "engineer" a homosexual person straight, etc...

[SuE]

Our perception of attractiveness is mostly something we are born with. Otherwise Christians would have found success trying to "cure" homosexuality. But the truth is people are born with a particular sexual inclination, and thus a particular idea of what's attractive to them.

And you're never going to "engineer" a homosexual person straight, etc...

I don't know - I wasn't trying to be pessimistic but merely making an observation. True, subjectivity can color an opinion. But I disagree with your last statement, and I think many others who don't have anthropology degree blinders on will too.

A person's sexual inclination for 'men' or 'women' might be innate but how that manifests itself is largely cultural.

In some cultures women's feet or necks are the focal point of attractiveness. In other cultures, fat women are the beautiful ones. In some societies all women walk around bare chested and no man gives them a second look because breasts are not sexual. In other societies, a woman breast feeding a baby has to cover herself to avoid leering eyes.

Maybe it's the anthropology blinders but I see so much more possibilities that the current culture can hopeful evolve towards...

[Faust]

A person's sexual inclination for 'men' or 'women' might be innate but how that manifests itself is largely cultural.

In some cultures women's feet or necks are the focal point of attractiveness. In other cultures, fat women are the beautiful ones. In some societies all women walk around bare chested and no man gives them a second look because breasts are not sexual. In other societies, a woman breast feeding a baby has to cover herself to avoid leering eyes.

Maybe it's the anthropology blinders but I see so much more possibilities that the current culture can hopeful evolve towards...

(That's exactly what I was alluding to. I don't see how the ways of some tribe in Bora-Bora disproves how the rest of humanity has lived for thousands of years. I live in THIS civilization and I am interested in issues that surround IT. Anyway, it's getting off-topic - sorry!)

[Dorje]

Ok, true about different societal influences, but it has been proven that there are some factors that have to do with suitability for reproduction, protection, stability, and more that we are looking for in a partner. Some examples are certain body proportions in both men and women, facial structure and symmetry of facial features. These factors are ingrained in our DNA and while they can be influenced by society they cannot be changed radically into anything. Research has also found that people are attracted to the smell of people that are compatible genetically moreso that people who are not, and the strength of this attraction is also dependent on the menstrual cycle for women... i.e. they find men smell better when they can conceive.

So anyway, coming back on topic... I am just pointing out that what we consider attractive does not have everything to do with what models fashion houses use to display their wares on the runway.

[SuE]

(That's exactly what I was alluding to. I don't see how the ways of some tribe in Bora-Bora disproves how the rest of humanity has lived for thousands of years. I live in THIS civilization and I am interested in issues that surround IT. Anyway, it's getting off-topic - sorry!)

(But this civilization is not thousands of years old. Capitalism and industrialism is barely going on four hundred years. 'Homosexuality' wasn't even recognized as a 'thing' until 150 years ago and for over a hundred years after was diagnosed as an illness. This civilization likes to draw its heritage from the Greeks where men fucking men was considered the norm not the alternative...

It's not that ways of some tribe Bora-Bora tribe disproves how the rest of humanity has lived for thousands of years — instead it show the many diverse ways humanity can live. FWIW the feet fetish and neck fetish examples were of China and Japan respectively)

[viv1984viv]

I agree with Sue on many points and have nothing more to add to that.

Dorje - I appreciate there are some empirical factors involved in attractiveness and arousal, but I think to assume every impulse and manifestation of attraction is determined by 'natural' or 'ingrained' is myopic and too quick. In fact, and perhaps im being a touch glib here, this argument follows the same trajectory as 'we evolved for a reason' (i.e. the theism of science).

Also - to clarify, I didn't mean to suggest that a sexuality can be engineered. We are products of a cloying environment that forms us and our subjectivity. One cannot step outside this. All the electricity or drugs or conditioning or 'therapy' in the world cannot reverse engineer the crust we form for of environment - but still, we are subjects of an environment.

[viv1984viv]

I'm in the middle of theorizing porn, but porn is a great example that shows how programmed sexual desire is...

From a biological standpoint what could be more horrifying than seeing a mate with the desired visual characteristics you are 'ingrained' to find desirable and arousing copulating with your reproductive competitor. In terms of biological-err-logic porn should be abhorrent, but its not, because it is a formed fetish - thus the line between natural attraction and psychological fetish is penumbral.

[viv1984viv]

Fit magna caedes - well there can be degrees of crust forming, remember a crust is a burn, a branding to begin with - there could be further burns, lacerations and incursions... some would call them events. But all this maintains correlationalism - subject-object correlationalism. Meillassoux's project is to show how thinking can break from this correlation. He is bold, and persuasive, but admittedly he hasn't finished his project yet, so we have to wait for his next books!

But yes, there is an underlying giveness of correlationalism in the ideas im working from here.

I'd also say, to bolster my positions, that something like attraction, sexuality and corporeal ideals - are deep in a subjectivity compared to strict logic - the latter is what QM works from, exclusively.

[viv1984viv]

That is interesting, I'll have to revisit Phaedrus. But, and you can probably tell im running a lacanian OS here, lifting what 'one' 'thought' was 'ones self' is essentially just a positive spin on a subjectivity being further formed by the object. So just as you say the desire is to transcend you could also say that the desire is to be a becoming subject - but this doesn't break the correlation.

I don't want to go too deep into the significance of subjectivity and the crust - but think along the lines of what 'constitutes' the subject - language/the symbolic.

The crust, the engineering, never finishes - it just changes, ruptures, ossifies and cracks occasionally (the latter only if you're lucky).

To tie it back into porn. Porn taps into desire by its own lack - the drive of porn is what it misses - tactility, companionship, relation, whatever. So all porn operates on the basis of what is not there. This is why porn is a ritualized fetish - under my current reading.

But, I've totally derailed this thread - sorry faust.