Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel | 
| Author: Jean Kilbourne
Creator: Mary Pipher
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 7553
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.7 x 6.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0684866005
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.834
EAN: 9780684866000
ASIN: 0684866005
Publication Date: November 2, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Light to moderate wear to the cover. Internal pages contain some notes/highlighting. All pages are legible and binding is strong.
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Product Description
"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 expose, 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
 EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS BOOK January 25, 2007
My title says it all. It's very informative and allows the reader to understand why she/he thinks about and responds to american culture in certain ways. Very eye opening.
Also see the DVD with Jean Kilbourne August 6, 2006
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book's ideas need to reach more people. It seems we're inundated with stories of child molesters, drug pushers, and other threats to us and our children; but the 200 billion dollars spent by the junk food makers, pharmaceutical pushers, military recruiters and others to colonize the hearts and minds of our kids is often overlooked. Sadly, many of those who are learning to look critically at the commercial media are often more privileged economically. Maybe we can find ways to reach out to other sectors of our society through letters to editors, calls to talk radio, writing on message boards and so forth. Also, there are additional resources that we can use to share perspectives to help protect people (kids and adults) from the psychological warfare of Big Business. I'd recommend DVDs like "Deadly Persuasion" from the Media Education Foundation, which is an expose of tobacco and alcohol advertising presented by Jean Kilbourne. There is also the award-winning film called "The Corporation" available from Amazon. Subscriptions to "Adbusters" and "New Moon" are also very helpful outreach tools.
An Absolute Must Read!! October 25, 2005
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
Can't Buy My Love is an extraordinary book, insightful, critical, and without a doubt, an eye-opener. This book should be required reading by all Americans! Personally, it has played a pivotal role in my life. I would say I'm your average American citizen. I grew up in New York, immersed in the typical American culture. I watched plenty of television and movies and thus was exposed to an endless array of advertisements. As most people, I didn't think that my thoughts and actions were influenced by these advertisements. But after reading this book, I clearly saw how the messages and images of the media had a huge impact in my life. Until I read this book, I was sort of unconscious of this influence. I just went shopping as though it was a ritual and followed the mainstream culture. I went out drinking and pretended to have a good time while engaged in superficial conversations in loud smoky bars. Essentially, this book brought me to many realizations and my mentality started to shift for the better. I started to see things for what they are. Jean Kilbourne does an excellent job of analyzing numerous ads and clearly demonstrates the manipulation and false promises imbedded within these cleverly designed ads. Corporations spend millions of dollars on advertising and psychological research. As the targets of these ads, we as citizens need to be critical thinkers and media literate. In this day and age, we need to have an understanding of how the media industry works and in particular, the advertising industry, which constantly bombards us with messages on how we should live our lives and what is considered "normal." I highly, highly recommend this book. It's clear, concise, understandable, and will definitely have a positive impact in your life. I especially recommend this book to teenagers, who unfortunately have become the victims of massive amounts of advertisements. Profit-driven corporations have taken advantage of young impressionable minds and for that reason, I urge you to pick up a copy of this book for yourself and someone you care about! This one book was able to jump start a transformation in my life. I promise you won't regret reading it!
A fantastic and important book October 13, 2005
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
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In our culture of product placements, "ambient" advertising (ie sticker ads on fruit peels, cars wrapped in company logos) and "tie ins" between just about every form of entertainment and commerce, this book does an amazing job of looking at how commercial forces shape definitions of 'normal', 'beautiful' etc.
I found Can't Buy My Love (which is written by Jean Kilbourne, NOT Mary Pipher) packed with interesting, relevant, easy-to-digest content that was both fascinating (companies spend over a half a million dollars to produce commercials aired during the Superbowl?!) and maddening (the real reason some companies seem suddenly to support a minority group, ie teens, the gay community etc, is that they seem them as an emerging market)--but I guess the maddening part is good because it lays bare how the media operate and how we're subjected to their sophisticated selling strategies whether we want to be or not .
I had no idea how much I *didn't* know about media and marketing until I read this book.... and having read some of the other titles mentioned by other reviewes, I think Kilbourne's book does a superior job explaining how the media (and manufacturers who hire them) affect nearly every aspect of our daily lives...and what we can do about it..
 Unbelievably terrible: more of a rant than a true analysis October 6, 2005
17 out of 43 found this review helpful
Jean Kilbourne has a great premise for "Can't Buy My Love": that corporations and the media use advertising to manipulate our emotions. And, throughout the book, she makes several insightful points about this phenomenon. However, Kilbourne's personal agenda, lack of self-awareness, humorless writing, and faulty interpretations quickly negate any good this book could do.
Kilbourne obviously has personal issues with cigarettes, alcohol, and sex/relationships. Unfortunately, she allows her subjectivity to color her writing, making "Can't Buy My Love" less thoughtful analysis and more personal diatribe. Kilbourne comes across as bitter, vindictive, and--most importantly in a book of this type--more full of opinions than of facts and research.
Many of Kilbourne's interpretations of various advertisements are faulty; she likes to "reach" with her interpretations, and in several cases, it's obvious that she has completely misread. Even more damaging to her case, Kilbourne rarely supports her own interpretations with any sources or even with any true commentary. Rather, she shows a picture of an ad and offers only a paragraph or two of her own interpretation before moving on. The book often feels unorganized and disconnected, especially when Kilbourne inserts a rant that is only vaguely related to the ads she's discussing--or even to advertising itself.
What really destroys the book, in my opinion, is Kilbourne's almost complete lack of humor. She doesn't recognize obvious humor or satire in certain advertisements, and she rarely lightens her vitriolic tone. She comes across as bitter, angry, and a little insane.
I would not recommend this book to anyone who wants an academic look at how advertising affects our emotions and behavior. Rather, you should read Stephen Kline's "Social Communication in Advertising: Persons, Products, and Images of Well-Being" or Judith Williamson's "Decoding Advertisements."
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