Clothes Don't Maketh....

I get what you're saying. But I still do think it has some kind of impact, though not in the way you're thinking. Advertising tends to enforce norms, and these norms permeate through society and hit you not in and through bill boards or television screens, but through your friends and family. They create images of success and beauty that come to be so readily adopted that they lose (nearly) all sense of their genesis, and instead present themselves as cultural norms, social values, etc. On this basis, people come to be exposed to demands that they take to be those of everyone around them, and in this sense they come to dominate and rule the lives of the growing generation (those influenced most by others). Through advertising, everything appears as if it is reflecting already pre-existing social norms -- when, in fact, it is reinforcing the old and in the process creating something new.

Advertising isn't wholly to blame, of course, but it is important to recognise because it is something that we can control. It's role is one of reinforcement, and it we should be more wary of the norms that are pushed through. It gives us an opportunity to look at the way we think, feel and act, and make changes. You were ****ed up already, like most of us here, because of your experiences in life. That life wasn't something static, forever given: it was a social world shaped by the conscious profit-driven industry that has dominated our lives for the last 30 years, advertising (which, in itself, is no more than part of the process of production).

Anyway, don't know why I posted that. But interesting post you made.