As students considered their topics, I supplemented The Ad and the Ego with parts of the PBS documentary Affluenza . My colleague, Tamar Ehrlich, a member of Portland's Rethinking Schools Globalization Workgroup, also told me that her ninth graders had an easier time with Affluenza than with Ad and the Ego , and that they appreciated Affluenza's greater emphasis on ways that young people could respond to the disease of consumerism. Students wrote fine essays, although these tended to focus more on how ads affected them individually than on the broader role that advertising plays in the global economy or global environmental problems. That said, many of the papers were passionate and insightful. You're staying in this house, I don't want you to humiliate both of us.
Advertising tries to make women increasingly uncomfortable in their lives.
The market of products out there never lets you know you're OK or that you too are a beautiful person. Rather, they try to show you how you need to increase your beauty. Get a tan, get luscious lashes, fuller lips, and shiny nails. After all, you're ugly. A number of my students were also enrolled in my colleague Bill McClendon's social psychology class, and this overlap was especially valuable in deepening the feminist critique of advertising.