Can't Buy My Love

How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel

Jean Kilbourne

• Publisher: Free Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780684866000
• eBook ISBN:
  9781451698411
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Advertising
• Index: Social Sciences

"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 ad
Many 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 exposé, 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 barrage of advertising drastically affects young people, especially girls, by offering false promises of rebellion, connection, and control. She also offers a surprising analysis of the way advertising creates and then feeds an addictive mentality that often continues throughout adulthood.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Description
• About Jean Kilbourne, Ed. D
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Introduction: “A Girl of Many Parts”
• Chapter 1: “Buy this 24-Year-Old and get all his Friends Absolutely Free”
• Chapter 2: “In your Face … All Over the Place!”
• Chapter 3: “Bath Tissue is Like Marriage”
• Chapter 4: “Can an Engine Pump the Valves in your Heart?”
• Chapter 5: “Please, Please, You’re Driving Me Wild”
• Chapter 6: “The More you Subtract, the More you Add”
• Chapter 7: “Forget the Rules! Enjoy the Wine”
• Chapter 8: “What you’re Looking For”
• Chapter 9: “The Dream Begins as Soon as you Open the Door”
• Chapter 10: “In Life there are Many Loves, but Only One Grande Passion”
• Chapter 11: “You Talkin’ to Me?”
• Chapter 12: “Two Ways A Woman can Get Hurt”
• Chapter 13: “Relax. and Enjoy the Revolution”
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments
• Index