Book Review: Can't Buy My Love (How Advertsing Changes the Way We Think and Feel)
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Nancy L. Brown, PhD
Have I said lately how much I love having a great excuse to read a book? For the last two weeks I told myself "I have to finish that blog post," and I got to read a whole book. As a parent I know it can be hard to make time to read, but this book is worth the effort.
Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel (1999) is by Jean Kilbourne, the woman who brought us great videos like "Killing Us Softly: Advertising's Image of Women (2000)," "Slim Hopes: Advertising & The Obsession with Thinness (1995)," "Spin the Bottle: Sex, Lies & Alcohol (2004)," and "Deadly Persuasion: The Advertising of Alcohol & Tobacco (2003)." As you can see by her other work, this author is about awareness, and as a behavioral psychologist, I know that awareness is the first step in behavior change, and this book brings it on! Have fun reading!
Be warned - this book is dense and hopefully will inflame your sense of decency and inspire social protest! The message of the book is that whether or not we admit it, we are each profoundly influenced by advertising, and our children are growing up in a toxic cultural environment. Adolescents and children are inexperienced consumers, and that makes them prime targets for the power of advertising. This author helps us realize that the messages we get from advertising (about 3,000 a day) are inside our heads, relationships, hearts, offices, and homes. Advertisers use every emotion we have to first undermine our sense of selves, beauty, efficiency, productivity, ability to function as a person, parent, spouse, employee and community member - and then sell us products that transform our weaknesses and make us superior to others.
I think the most disconcerting thing about this book for me was the realization that to the advertising industry, we are all just sheep, being fed to the wolves, particularly, young women. None of us can withstand the pressure to believe in "happily ever after stories," where roses and affection are enough! Who could love us for who and what we are, when there is always someone better out there? Advertising undermines our ability to love ourselves and others. We are constantly told that we are not good enough: our skin, wrinkles, nails and hair are beyond even a dermatologists help, our butts and thighs are way too big, our breasts are never big enough, and we need better cars, homes, clothing, and activities if we want to have a good, long, lasting relationship, which by the way is impossible, because when something gets old, our society replaces it!
If everything we aspire to can be bought, then why are there so many broken hearts? If we can smoke and eat like a bird to be thin, drive the fastest car, "deal" with our fertility using better birth control pills, drink alcohol to make us fearless, rebellious, independent, and invincible, and buy products guaranteed to transform even an old goat into a beauty, then why are our health care costs soaring?
This book brings home the fact that everywhere we look, we are offered false excitement and pseudo-intensity. Not only does this inevitably disappoint us, it also contributes to the general belief in our culture that every moment of our lives should be exciting, fun, sexy, passionate, and intense, suggesting that the things we do everyday for the people we love are worthless, mundane, and "what we settle for," instead of what we value. We are addicts and the messages from the advertising industry is our drug. Without the products they are selling, we will all be isolated, alone, ugly, and depressed.
When will we get it through our thick skulls that Internet, TV, radio, billboard, and print advertising are teaching our children to consume, escape, be greedy and violent? Eating disorders, depression, anxiety, alcohol and drug use, smoking, and cosmetic augmentation are increasing, and the advertising industry is not helping. What can parents, teachers, adolescents, and health care policy do to change this, and when will we demand it?
Resources
All of the videos are available at
MediaEd.org and Ms. Kilbourne's
website includes some great resources, as well.
Photo credit:
antmooseLabels: Advertising, Book Review, Healthline, Parenting
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Shame on RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Nancy L. Brown, PhD
As more women are dying of
lung cancer than they are of breast cancer,
RJ Reynolds steps up to the plate and encourages more women to smoke with Camel No.9. This new brand of cigarettes is advertised as light & luscious, with flowers, black, bright pink and teal colors - and pulls for images of being "dressed to the nines." Ads for the new brand of their most successful brand may show up in Cosmopolitan and Glamour magazines - both with large numbers of young female readers.
What will it take for companies to stop marketing smoking as stylish and glamorous? There is no research that suggests smoking helps manage weight, but we do know it will kill people who choose to smoke!
Photo Credit:
Smoking girl lover
Labels: Advertising, Smoking
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U.S. Food Companies Promise to Limit Advertising to Kids
Friday, August 03, 2007
Nancy L. Brown, PhD
It is about time! Posted on the
Council of Better Business Bureaus web site are the pledges by some of the biggest food and drink companies, including McDonald's, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and General Mills to regulate their advertising aimed at children under age 12 in an attempt to help reduce
childhood obesity. This seems like a step in the right direction, but I can't keep from wondering if the efforts will go far enough.
Of course, the companies all agree to do different things, but some seemed pretty right on. For example, McDonald's said all advertising directed at children under age 12 would focus on
healthy dietary choices. PepsiCo said their advertising would emphasize healthy lifestyles, and Coca-Cola said it would only advertise water and juice to kids.
Now maybe we can get some of the media companies to limit the use of licensed cartoon characters to promote low-nutrition foods, ya think?
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jeri leanderaLabels: Advertising, Obesity
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Selling Food to Children: Why is Obesity a Problem?
Monday, April 02, 2007
Nancy L. Brown, PhD
Here is an assignment for you - watch TV with your tween one day and count the food advertisements - a recent study suggests you will see about 21 a day, and 34% of them will be advertising candy or snacks, 28% will be for cereal, and 10% will be for fast food!
As
obesity becomes a bigger and bigger problem, federal organizations including the Institute of Medicine (
IOM) and the Federal Trade Commission (
FTC) have called for voluntary changes in the advertising of food to children. To help inform this debate, the
Kaiser Family Foundation has released the largest study ever conducted of TV food advertising to children.
The study, "
Food for Thought: TV Food Advertising to Children in the United States," suggests that tweens see the most (about 7,600 a year), and many send them to a web site for games, prizes, and surprise, more advertising! The study is based on a sample of 1,638 hours of TV content (which I hope included hazardous duty pay), which included 8,854 food ads.
One more reason to
lose the TV!
Related Previous Posts:
Couch Potato? Online Advertising,
Childhood ObesityPhoto Credit:
TomeppyLabels: Advertising, Obesity
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Thanks to David at HealthBlawg for including a post about the impact of advertising from Teen Health 411 in Grand Rounds 4.21 this week.
Have I said lately how much I love having a great excuse to read a book? For the last two weeks I told myself "I have to finish that blog post," and I got to read a whole book. As a parent I know it can be hard to make time to read, but this book is worth the effort. 
As more women are dying of lung cancer than they are of breast cancer, RJ Reynolds steps up to the plate and encourages more women to smoke with Camel No.9. This new brand of cigarettes is advertised as light & luscious, with flowers, black, bright pink and teal colors - and pulls for images of being "dressed to the nines." Ads for the new brand of their most successful brand may show up in Cosmopolitan and Glamour magazines - both with large numbers of young female readers.
It is about time! Posted on the Council of Better Business Bureaus web site are the pledges by some of the biggest food and drink companies, including McDonald's, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and General Mills to regulate their advertising aimed at children under age 12 in an attempt to help reduce childhood obesity. This seems like a step in the right direction, but I can't keep from wondering if the efforts will go far enough.
Here is an assignment for you - watch TV with your tween one day and count the food advertisements - a recent study suggests you will see about 21 a day, and 34% of them will be advertising candy or snacks, 28% will be for cereal, and 10% will be for fast food! 
