About Killing Us Softly 4 This newest edition of Jean Kilbourne's influential and award-winning Killing Us Softly series shows how the advertising industry continues to reinforce, and glamorize, a regressive and debased notion of femininity. Using a wide range of contemporary print and television ads, Kilbourne lays bare a misogynistic fantasy world of undernourished, oversexed, and objectified women, and examines these images against the real-world backdrop of eating disorders, men's violence against women, and the political backlash against feminism. At once provocative and inspiring, Killing Us Softly 4 challenges young people to question traditional gender norms and think critically about the fundamental relationship between representation and power.