Джин Килборн: Критика рекламы и медиаграмотность.

Jean Kilbourne (born January 4, 1943) is an American public speaker, writer, filmmaker and activist, who is known for her work on the image of women in advertising and her critical studies of alcohol and tobacco advertising. She is also credited with introducing the idea of educating about media literacy as a way to prevent problems she viewed as originating from mass media advertising campaigns. She also lectures about the topic, and her documentaries (such as the Killing Us Softly series) based on these lectures are viewed around the world. She is a graduate of Wellesley College and holds a doctorate in education from Boston University, as well as an honorary doctorate from Westfield State College, for her "research [and] insights [that] lead us from consumerism to consciousness." including violence against women, eating disorders, and addiction, and launched a movement to promote media literacy as a way to prevent these problems. An idea that diverged significantly from the mainstream at the time, this approach has since become mainstream and an integral part of most prevention programs. Kilbourne has spoken at about half of the colleges and universities in the U. S. She is frequently a keynote speaker at a wide range of conferences, including those focusing on addictions and public health, violence against women, and media literacy. the same year she was granted an honorary doctorate from Westfield State College. In recent years, Kilbourne has been interviewed for Feminists Who Changed America 1963–1975 and included as a trading card for Media Heroes which "celebrate beloved media heroes" as a teaching tool with hand drawn art along with a short biography.

In 1977, Kilbourne became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP). WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization. The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women based media.

Originally published as Deadly Persuasion by Simon & Schuster in 1999, won the Distinguished Publication Award from the Association for Women in Psychology. She has written many articles, including editorials in The New York Times, USA Today and The Journal of the American Medical Women's Association, and has contributed chapters to many books.

Kilbourne's work has been cited and heavily discussed in academics, in both research journals and the classroom. In Tyson Smith's Pumping Irony: The Construction of Masculinity in a Post feminist Advertising Campaign Kilbourne is cited for her statements on advertising alcohol in the article's section focusing on a campaign for Jim Beam bourbon, which sought to bring the young, white, middle class heterosexual male. Though paraphrased, Smith references Kilbourne when critiquing the ad campaign, saying that alcohol consumption typically leads to addiction, and that alcohol brands aim to create a bond between the potential addict and the brand itself. The reasoning being that "the addict is the ideal customer" because "ten percent of drinkers consume over 60% of all alcohol sold." Kilbourne is further referenced in Smith's article, particularly about the link between drinking alcohol and the image of masculinity. The very concept of alcohol consumption is "seen as both rebellious and dangerous" and a rite of passage to become 'a real man.' Alcohol advertisements "walk a fine line between wildness and anti social behavior" as Kilbourne said because ads typically depict personality changes in people after consumption, "normalizing" the change, and often associate the alcoholic product and defiance. The ad campaign itself, titled Real Friends, featured the 'everyday guy' such as the bar frequenter with text such as "If the chicks ask, we're watching the footy" rather than using the hyper masculine image of men, yet reinforces the hyper masculine stereotype since the men in the campaign are "assertive and defiant in the form of rejecting women's demands." Following the same theme of advertising and its impact on gender, Kilbourne and some of her work, the Killing Us Softly series and Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising were used for Reaffirming the Ideal: A Focus Group Analysis of the Campaign for Real Beauty. Recalling Kilbourne's idea that advertisers would not spend the supposed billions of dollars on ad campaigns if consumers felt advertisements had no effect on them, which the relationship between advertisers and consumers is documented in her Killing Us Softly series, particularly with women's body image set as a standard by advertisers. Additionally, since the Unilever Dove Campaign for Real Beauty seeks to address the effects of beauty advertising on young girls' self esteem and body image in an educational way, Kilbourne's series may have been an influence. Noting that Kilbourne's Killing Us Softly series is an available educational source with supplemental materials for high school and college level courses, and the fact that one of the article's authors, Julie Ann Scott, teaches at an institution where the series is part of the foundation for the Women's Studies program brings validity to Kilbourne's decades long efforts exposing advertising's attitudes about how women should look if they want to be considered 'beautiful.'

In addition to lectures and being featured in her own documentaries, Kilbourne has been in the documentary Miss Representation about advertising's image of women, an expert at kidsinthehouse. com where she has a video series on parenting advice, and a guest on Katie Couric's talkshow Katie for an episode on deadly dangerous teen dieting trends that affect all genders and result in suicide, starvation, hospitalizations and substance abuse. In 2020, Jean Kilbourne wrote for Ms Magazine with Jackson Katz criticism of Donald Trump in the toxic masculinity era. In 2019, she wrote a magazine article about her early work experience, when she was sexually harassed by Li'l Abner creator Al Capp and the event's lingering impact on her.