Can't Buy My Love

"When was the last time you felt this comfortable in a relationship?"-- An ad for sneakers"You can love it without getting your heart broken." -- An ad for a car"Until I find a real man, I'll settle for a real smoke." -- A woman in a cigarette adMany advertisements these days make us feel as if we have an intimate, even passionate relationship with a product. But as Jean Kilbourne points out in this fascinating and shocking expos, the dreamlike promise of advertising always leaves us hungry for more. We can never be satisfied, because the products we love cannot love us back.Drawing upon her knowledge of psychology, media, and women's issues, Kilbourne offers nothing less than a new understanding of a ubiquitous phenomenon in our culture. The average American is exposed to over 3,000 advertisements a day and watches three years' worth of television ads over the course of a lifetime. Kilbourne paints a gripping portrait of how this...