THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Jean Kilbourne
“Other feminists would say to me, ‘We’re dealing with serious issues like violence against women. We don’t have time for trivial issues like the image of women in advertising.'”
Filmmaker, author, speaker. Renowned for her work on the image of women in advertising. Pioneered connection between advertising and such public health issues as eating disorders, addiction and violence against women. Created “Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women” film series. Author of Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel as well as So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids. Inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2015. B.A. in English from Wellesley College. Doctorate in education from Boston University.
Interviewed by Claudia Kilbourne Lux, April 2022
Photo 1. Jean Kilbourne, circa 1965. Photo 2. Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly 4.
More About Jean:
- Jean Kilbourne official website
- TEDx talk “The Dangerous Ways Ads See Women”
- MAKERS, “Look Fear in the Face”
- “Killing Us Softly 4” trailer
- “Miss Representation,” written and directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom
- An interview with Writer/Director Jennifer Siebel Newsom and exclusive remarks from Barbara J. Berg, M. Gigi Durham, Caroline Heldman, Jean Kilbourne, Jennifer Lawless, Nancy Pelosi, Jennifer L. Pozner and Marie Wilson.
- The National Women’s Hall of Fame, Jean Kilbourne honored in 2015
- Cited in Barbara Love’s book, Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975, page 253