It used to be identity was to be found in the way we thought, the groups we were a part of, and the things we held dear. More and more, however, we exist in a monotonic world where our identity is provided by the things we display (cloths, watches, smart phones, stinky chemical scents), our thinking is remarkably conformist and identical, and we all belong to the same social group knowm as “the consumers.” It is a brave new world world where the pain of our shrinking sense of self can, we are told, be easily be mitigated and managed with the appropriate product purchase (booze, antidepressents, social phones) . But in case you haven’t realized, more product purchase doesn’t help. The anxiety and malaise continue to grow.

This student essay was submitted for Sociology 435 (The Sociology of Social Change) at Athabasca University. It is a critical examination of  the “heinous” way the media treated the aids epidemic, and their absolute disregard for social responsibility or the deleterious impact media messages were having on the public’s understanding of the disease.  The media
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First published in 1994 by Gerald Grow, this article takes a critical look at advertising, exploring the meaning behind the images. Commercials work not because they sell a product, but because they sell a “state of existence,” or a “way of being” that we find desirable or that we attain towards, but that we can never achieve! In a very real sense advertising, argues Grow, promotes despair and depression because advertising shows us things that most of us can never attain. Are advertisers to blame, then, for the exploding rates of depression and mental illness, eating disorder and pathology, in our “modern” world?

While traveling recently, I stopped at a fast food restaurant with my 6-year-old daughter. When we sat down at the table to eat, she disappointedly pulled a pink care bear out of her cheeseburger meal. When I asked her what was wrong she asked why the woman had given her a care bear when she wanted a transformer. She went on to explain to me that she liked boy’s toys because she was a tom boy. Why did the fast food worker assume that my daughter wanted the care bear? Why is the transformer considered a boy toy?

[amazonify]0745326889:right[/amazonify] A Century of Spin: How Public Relations Became the Cutting Edge of Corporate Power . There are now a range of academic disciplines which
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