If students are not trained to ask basic questions about the images which confront them, if they are not asked to examine the knowledge and assumptions which they already possess, they are being denied the opportunity to develop the most simple and essential critical tools.
Pam Steager
Jean
It was during my career in
It was during my career in prevention, probably in the mid-80s, when I first heard Jean Kilbourne and her Killing Us Softly: Advertising's Image of Women presentation in Boston. I'd been having my own personal love-hate relationship with advertising and women's magazines for some time already by then, but Jean focused in on a number of aspects I hadn't paid much attention to and made some strong connections between the totality of images of women in advertising and our place and treatment in American society. One of my favorite definitions of media literacy is that it makes the invisible visible, and that's exactly what Jean did for me that day, and that sparked a lifelong interest in the critical analysis of media messages.