Can't Buy My Love:
How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel

by Jean Kilbourne + Touchstone + November 2000 + 368 Pages + ISBN: 0-684-86600-5 + $14.00 paperback

Can't Buy My Love is the paperback edition of Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising, published in hardback in 1999.

I encourage you to buy and read this book. It’s a source of reason, enlightenment, passion, love.

--Artifex. Read full review.

--Susan Faludi author of Backlash and Stiffed

“Backlash meets The Beauty Myth … a scathing attack on the powers that tell us
what, how much,when and why to buy.”

--SELF magazine

“A profound work that is required reading for informed consumers.”

--Publishers Weekly

“Jean Kilbourne’s book is a clarion call for a new era of social protest. I am ready
to march.”

--Mary Pipher

--Arlie Hochschild author of The Time Bind; Director, Center for Working Families, University of California, Berkeley

--Maya Angelou

A powerful, sobering call to arms by the documentarian (Killing Us Softly, Slim Hopes, Pack of Lies), lecturer, and scholar. Jean Kilbourne has an axe to grind, as she is refreshingly honest about admitting right up front. She is appalled by the power that various industries exert over the media, and has spent the past 30 years researching the pervasive and insidious nature of advertising in society. Here she examines the influence that advertising has on consumers, focusing particularly on how it contributes to the problems that girls and women already face in terms of economics, violence, and physical and emotional health. Kilbourne does not naively attribute any of the problems that women face directly to advertising; indeed she frequently states that no one particular advertisement or campaign can be blamed for anything. But her incisive interpretation of research and statistics points out with precision the advantage advertising companies take of the public's tendencies toward addiction, and, even more importantly, the ways corporations use their economic hold over the media to withhold information from their customers. Kilbourne is specific and often humorous as she displays and deconstructs various ad campaigns and their methods of co-opting the human desire for connection; referring to a BMW ad that claims, ``If you do shiver, it'll be from excitement,'' she asks, ``Are we supposed literally to be turned on by the experience of driving these cars (or simply being inside them)? Is it progress that both men and women can now experience the thrill of having sex with their cars? Will people go parking by themselves before long?'' One of the most egregious results of the ever-present sales pitch, explains Kilbourne, is the fact that those who buy whatever is being sold are often trying to fill an internal emptiness and inevitably failing. A broad and provocative look at the ads that bombard us, and what they do to our culture. (100 b&w illus.) (Radio satellite tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Kilbourne is mad as hell and is not going to take it anymore. In this all-out assault on the advertising industry, she expands on the landmark studies of Wilson Key to accuse advertisers of deliberately creating an atmosphere that encourages addictive behavior. Through an adolescent world view emphasizing narcissism, immediate gratification, and rebellion, they target the most vulnerable, and highly desirable, marketing demographic--young women aged 15 to 30. In graphic examples, Kilbourne, a visiting scholar at Wellesley College and a popular national lecturer, illustrates the ways they concoct a virtual reality in which addictive behavior, especially that connected with alcohol, tobacco, sex, and food, is presented not only as normal but also as the solution to any problem. Women whose self-image is shaped by ads depicting them as childlike and ineffectual are particularly susceptible to the premise that the purchase and use of certain products will make their social, emotional, and financial difficulties disappear. In this regard, the chapters on alcohol and sexual violence are both powerful and persuasive. Although strident at times, this is an important work. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries. -- Rose M. Cichy, Osterhout Free Lib., Wilkes-Barre, PA Copyright ©1999, Cahners Business Information.

No longer confined to 30-second TV spots and newspaper and magazine columns, advertisements now find their way into movie plots (as product placements) and high school lessons, onto municipal buses, sports scoreboards, clothing and even food. Kilbourne, best known for her documentary film work (Killing Us Softly; Pack of Lies), has extended her anti-advertising crusade into print in a profound work that is required reading for informed consumers. She adeptly illustrates that advertising encourages buyers to lavish affection on products rather than on other people, and pitches these trivialized relationships most fervently to girls and women. Worse, according to the author, addictive products are touted as outlets of expression and rebellion and are advertised to an increasingly younger demographic. She writes, "Advertising doesn't cause addictions. But... [it] contributes mightily to the climate of denial in which relationships flounder and addictions flourish." Drawing on a combination of psychology, feminist critique and media studies, Kilbourne cites numerous ads that downplay romantic commitment or healthy self-esteem in order to sell these qualities through products like backpacks or diet pills. She exposes the way advertisers take advantage of women's and girls' stifled feelings of rage and loss of control, and cause gender stereotypes to flourish. Likely to spark intense controversy, Kilbourne's passionate treatise is a wake-up call about the damaging effects of advertising in our media-saturated culture. Copyright ©1999, Cahners Business Information.