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Jean Kilbourne
Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Corrupts Relationships
By Beth Heinen
Editor in Chief
FILE PHOTO
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Although Jean Kilbourne has appeared in the January Series’ roster numerous times, even as recently as last year, her lecture still managed to draw a full house with many overflow rooms on Wednesday afternoon. Internationally recognized for her groundbreaking work on advertising and its effects, especially on women, Kilbourne has twice been named “Lecturer of the Year” by the National Association of Campus Activities. She has also produced a number of documentaries on advertising and is a well-known author.
On Wednesday, Kilbourne’s topic was on advertising, relationships and addiction. This topic came straight from the pages of her most recent book by the same name as her lecture title, Can’t Buy My Love.
“Addictions are profitable,” she explained at the very beginning, to demonstrate the correlation between advertising and addictions. “Every time an addict recovers, someone loses money.
“And ads encourage addictions in many ways. Advertising encourages the mindset that your dreams are fulfilled as soon as you get the product. It trivializes things like marriage by linking it to trivial things like cars or bath tissue.” Accompanying this was a slide of an ad for bath tissue, with the text, “Marriage is like bath tissue: The longer it is, the better it gets.”
Kilbourne was quick to denounce nearly all forms of advertising, calling it the “propaganda of American society.” She acknowledged that advertising is a very powerful and educational source in today’s culture, but that its most frightening aspect is that its influence is unconscious.
To demonstrate the subconscious messages that ads can push, Kilbourne showed some slides of ads portraying callous attitudes towards children and relationships. One ad portrayed an infant buckled in under only a seat belt, while in the car seat next to him sat the child safety seat with a snowboard tightly strapped in. The caption, “You know what your priorities are,” drew gasps from the crowd. Another car ad, with the words, “The commitment of a marriage – the fire of an affair,” prompted many to shake their heads in disgust.
A large potion of Kilbourne’s talk was directed against the tobacco companies. In one brief moment of personal reflection, she told the crowd that her mother had passed away when Jean was nine, and at the age of 13 Jean took up smoking.
Smokers use their addiction as an attempt to control negative feelings, to calm down, and to escape, she explained. Therefore, many battered women and depressed teenagers are smokers.
Although Kilbourne has since stopped smoking, she said that much of her recovery from that addiction was fueled by her eventual recovery from depression.
Therefore, she said, “I’m not anti-smoker at all. What I am is anti-tobacco industry.
“The tobacco industry spends eight billion dollars per year on advertising. Obviously, they are in the business of recruiting new smokers. When you sell a product that kills people, you’ve got a problem: your best customers are dying all the time!”
Kilbourne also demonstrated the cunning nature of advertisers who show food and drinks as sexual items to increase their appeal. One example of this was a yogurt ad with the words, “If you were any more satisfied, you’d blush.”
“Food is offered to women as a way to de-stress and as a way to deal with that disconnect,” she said. “It’s hard not to buy in to some of those advertising messages. Increasingly ads offer food as a way to connect romantically and sexually. The mणnage a’twoi that we’re made to feel ashamed of is with Ben and Jerry.
Kilbourne closed her talk by calling addictions a “public health problem” that can be solved “only by changing the environment.” She encouraged the teaching of media literacy in schools so that children and adolescents see how these unhealthy attitudes play out in the media.
“Advertisers offer addictive substances as outlets for coping,” she said. “It’s important to recognize this and fight it.”
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