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Shouldn't Men Have a Choice, Too?
By Glenn Sacks

Jennifer was crushed when she was told that a baby was on the way. She wants to have children, but the right way--after she has found the right person and is married. But in Jennifer's country, she has no choice. "Jenn" cannot give the child up for adoption, and she cannot terminate the pregnancy. It is her burden to bear, for the next two decades, like it or not.What country is it which compels a person to have a child they don't want? Afghanistan? Saudi Arabia?No, it's the United States--not for Jenn, but for Ken.

Ken Johnson, a 10 year veteran of the Seattle Fire Department, wanted to be a father, but with the right woman, and at the right time. Three years ago he and his wife separated after six years of marriage, and each began to date. During this time, according to court documents filed in Snohomish County, Washington, Ken had a brief affair with "Cathy," which resulted in a pregnancy. Ken's legal complaint alleges that he begged Cathy to put the child up for adoption or to terminate the pregnancy, but Cathy refused. Now Ken and his wife, who reconciled two and a half years ago, can't start a family of their own because almost half of Ken's net income from the Seattle Fire Department goes to support the child he didn't want to have. He says:"People tell me that Cathy should have the choice whether to keep the child or not because it's her body so it's her choice. I agree. But what about my body? I make my living rushing into burning buildings. I put my life and my safety on the line every time I go to work, and now I'm on the hook for 18 years. With the child support demands on me, there's no way I'll ever be able to quit. What about my choice?"

Johnson is part of a growing movement of men who bristle at being "coerced fathers," and who have enlisted in a "Choice for Men" movement whose goals are every bit as legitimate as the goals of the women's reproductive rights movement. They note that one million American women legally walk away from motherhood every year by either adoption, abortion, or abandonment, and demand that men, like women, be given reproductive options. They point out that, unlike women, men have no reliable contraception available to them, since the failure rate of condoms is substantial, and vasectomies are generally only worthwhile for older men who have already married and had children. And they emphasize that, with long backlogs of stable, two-parent families looking for babies to adopt, there is no reason for any child born out of wedlock to a "coerced father" to be without a good home.The Choice for Men movement seeks to give "coerced fathers" the right to relinquish their parental rights and responsibilities within a month of learning of a pregnancy, just as mothers do when they choose to give their children up for adoption. These men would be obligated to provide legitimate financial compensation to cover natal medical expenses, the mother's loss of income during pregnancy, etc. The right would only apply to pregnancies which occurred outside of marriage.

Some of those who fought for women's reproductive choices agree with choice for men. Karen DeCrow, former president of the National Organization for Women, writes:"If a woman makes a unilateral decision to bring a pregnancy to term, and the biological father does not, and cannot, share in this decision, he should not be liable for 21 years of support ... autonomous women making independent decisions about their lives should not expect men to finance their choice."

To date, courts have refused to consider fathers' reproductive rights even in the most extreme cases, including: when child support is demanded from men who were as young as 12 when they were statutorily raped by older women; when women have taken the semen from a used condom and inserted it in themselves, including from condoms used only in oral sex; and when women concealed the pregnancy from the man (denying him the right to be a father) and then sued for back and current child support eight or ten years later."It doesn't make sense to me," Ken's wife Patti says. "The courts force my husband and I to support a child he never agreed to, but make it financially impossible for him to have a child with the woman he loves and married."

'All I wanted was children'

Following the premature birth of her IVF octuplets, Nadya Suleman faces a backlash over her increasingly peculiar approach to motherhood

Nadya Suleman inhabits a world where the entitlement society and victim mentality merge. The mother of 14, a brood that more than doubled when she stunned the world and gave birth to octuplets 13 days ago, was so resentful at being raised an only child that she embarked on a single-minded mission to produce as many offspring as possible.And she has made it clear she believes it was her right to deploy science and a large stash of embryos to pursue that obsession – despite her status as a single mother with no regular source of income, the reported opposition of the sperm donor, and the disapproval of her own parents, who are sharing the burden of bringing up the family.With her eight tiny newborns still in hospital in Los Angeles, Miss Suleman offered a telling insight into her own psyche – part pitying "poor me", part defiant "why shouldn't I?" – in an unpaid interview with NBC.Publicists are also seeking to sell her story, but initial predictions that a deal might raise $2 million towards her child-care bills now appear greatly exaggerated after the public mood turned against her. Early suggestions that she could also find work as a television child-rearing guru appear even more remote.

The saga of the "octo-mom" has gripped the country and her first comments were eagerly awaited. They came on Friday when the 33-year-old former psychiatric assistant was asked by NBC interviewer Ann Curry whether, with six children already, she might have opted to have only one or two embryos implanted."Of course not," replied Miss Suleman, with a mixture of disbelief and scorn for the suggestion. "I wanted them all transferred. Those are my children, and that's what was available and I used them."So Miss Suleman took what was "available" and "used" them all, even if she was only hoping for just one more girl, as she insists. She had six embryos implanted by an unnamed doctor, but they apparently split into eight in the womb after the in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and she declined selective abortion.

The birth of healthy octuplets, nine weeks' premature, was initially welcomed as a heartening medical miracle in a country ground down by the daily barrage of bad economic news.But as it emerged that Miss Suleman was a single divorcée and already had six children aged between two and seven, all the product of IVF by the same doctor, even the tolerance of her famously liberal home state was tested to its limits.In tandem with the deepening public backlash, a heated ethical debate is also swirling about the actions of the unidentified specialist, who was reported on Friday to be under investigation by the California Medical Board. There are no laws restricting the number of embryos that can be implanted, but guidelines say the maximum for a healthy woman under 35 should be two. As the IVF will not have been covered by health insurance, the doctor may have been paid from the $170,000 in disability payments for back injuries Miss Suleman sustained in a 1999 riot at the psychiatric facility where she worked.

On NBC, Miss Suleman portrayed herself as a victim – of prejudice for choosing an "unconventional kind of life" as a single mother; and of the "isolation" of growing up in a "dysfunctional family".Yet the picture that emerged last week, from her own words, her mother's comments and her medical records, points to a young woman raised in a typical middle-class immigrant American family, the daughter of an Iraqi linguist and a mother from Lithuanian stock who worked as a teacher.What is in no doubt is the former cheerleader's single-minded determination to have as many children as she could. She began trying in her late teens and had the first of three miscarriages in 1995.A year later, she married Marcos Gutierrez, a produce manager who has made no comment on the controversy, but the couple separated in 2000.After suffering the serious back injury during the 1999 riot, she confided to a psychiatrist who was treating her that her inability to become pregnant was making her deeply depressed and had prompted suicidal thoughts.In 2001, she finally gave birth to a child conceived using IVF with sperm donated by a friend. Over the next five years, she had another five children, including twins, via the same IVF donor.With her mother Angela helping to look after the six grandchildren in the modest three-bedroom house they all shared in the LA suburb of Whittier, Miss Suleman returned to college, obtaining a degree in child development and then pursuing a master's in counselling.

But Miss Suleman's aspiration for a huge family was not over. Despite the sperm donor and her parents urging her to stop, she returned to her tame fertility specialist, as she wanted "just one more girl". By the time she turned up three months pregnant at the city's Kaiser Permanente medical centre (which is not the clinic where she was implanted), doctors thought she was pregnant with seven babies. But on Jan 26, there was another surprise – she gave birth to eight.

Such large multiple births have always attracted publicity. What is so unusual about this case is the level of opprobrium. Los Angeles' top-rated radio host, Bill Handel, decried the births as "freakish" and said his audience was "ready to boycott" firms that sent gifts to Miss Suleman and her babies.Hollywood publicist David Brokaw, an expert in "crisis management" for high-profile clients, said Miss Suleman's newly hired PR firm was dealing with a "calamity". He added: "I don't see, the way this is shaped, how you can say much about it in terms of something favourable."Sadly for Miss Suleman, her hastily hired publicist's prediction – that the public would change their opinion of her "for the good" once she broke her silence – has not come to pass. Indeed, her words seem to have fanned the flames.

A quick scan of responses to stories posted on an LA website shows its readers to be an unsympathetic bunch. Among the more polite, "Mowry" simply branded her a "total wacko". Another outraged California resident has even started an online "Freedom from Welfare" petition, aimed at "informing our government of our displeasure at the spending of our hard-earned tax dollars" on an "unmarried, unemployed female" whose family will be a "huge burden on the state of California".Miss Suleman's parents, who married in Las Vegas in 1974 and divorced in 1999, have put aside their differences to help their only child raise her burgeoning brood. Her mother, Angela, is now retired and spends much of her time looking after the six older children. Her Iraqi-born father, Edward, plans to return to his homeland to work as a translator to provide financial assistance to his daughter.

Miss Suleman is well-spoken and coherent, certainly not the sort of "trailer trash" who occupy the more lurid daytime chat shows. Yet this weekend her words were being dissected for evidence of her mental state, rather than celebrated for the happy news they convey.And she even managed a dig at some other parents, suggesting that she would be a better mother than many."I'm providing myself to my children," she said. "I'm loving them unconditionally… Everything I do, I'll stop my life for them and be present with them and hold them and be with them. And how many parents do that? I'm sure there are many that do, but many don't, and that's unfortunate and that is selfish."Her long-suffering mother has made clear her frustration with her daughter's family-rearing decisions in a series of exasperated comments since the birth. She observed despairingly that she wished Nadya had become a kindergarten teacher if she wanted to be surrounded by children and even felt the need to insist that her daughter was not "evil", just "obsessed".Miss Suleman, who cradles each baby for 45 minutes a day before they have to be placed back in units helping them breathe, makes no apologies for that obsession. "Sometimes we have that dream and that passion and we take risks," she told NBC. "All I wanted was children. I wanted to be a mom. That's all I ever wanted in my life. I love my children."

What’s Wrong With Cinderella?
By PEGGY ORENSTEIN
Published: December 24, 2006

I finally came unhinged in the dentist’s office — one of those ritzy pediatric practices tricked out with comic books, DVDs and arcade games — where I’d taken my 3-year-old daughter for her first exam. Until then, I’d held my tongue. I’d smiled politely every time the supermarket-checkout clerk greeted her with “Hi, Princess”; ignored the waitress at our local breakfast joint who called the funny-face pancakes she ordered her “princess meal”; made no comment when the lady at Longs Drugs said, “I bet I know your favorite color” and handed her a pink balloon rather than letting her choose for herself. Maybe it was the dentist’s Betty Boop inflection that got to me, but when she pointed to the exam chair and said, “Would you like to sit in my special princess throne so I can sparkle your teeth?” I lost it.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I snapped. “Do you have a princess drill, too?”She stared at me as if I were an evil stepmother.“Come on!” I continued, my voice rising. “It’s 2006, not 1950. This is Berkeley, Calif. Does every little girl really have to be a princess?”My daughter, who was reaching for a Cinderella sticker, looked back and forth between us. “Why are you so mad, Mama?” she asked. “What’s wrong with princesses?”

Diana may be dead and Masako disgraced, but here in America, we are in the midst of a royal moment. To call princesses a “trend” among girls is like calling Harry Potter a book. Sales at Disney Consumer Products, which started the craze six years ago by packaging nine of its female characters under one royal rubric, have shot up to $3 billion, globally, this year, from $300 million in 2001. There are now more than 25,000 Disney Princess items. “Princess,” as some Disney execs call it, is not only the fastest-growing brand the company has ever created; they say it is on its way to becoming the largest girls’ franchise on the planet.

Meanwhile in 2001, Mattel brought out its own “world of girl” line of princess Barbie dolls, DVDs, toys, clothing, home décor and myriad other products. At a time when Barbie sales were declining domestically, they became instant best sellers. Pink, it seems, is the new gold.When my own girl makes her daily beeline for the dress-up corner of her preschool classroom — something I’m convinced she does largely to torture me — I worry about what playing Little Mermaid is teaching her. I’ve spent much of my career writing about experiences that undermine girls’ well-being, warning parents that a preoccupation with body and beauty (encouraged by films, TV, magazines and, yes, toys) is perilous to their daughters’ mental and physical health. Am I now supposed to shrug and forget all that? If trafficking in stereotypes doesn’t matter at 3, when does it matter? At 6? Eight? Thirteen?

On the other hand, maybe I’m still surfing a washed-out second wave of feminism in a third-wave world. Maybe princesses are in fact a sign of progress, an indication that girls can embrace their predilection for pink without compromising strength or ambition; that, at long last, they can “have it all.” Or maybe it is even less complex than that: to mangle Freud, maybe a princess is sometimes just a princess. And, as my daughter wants to know, what’s wrong with that?

The rise of the Disney princesses reads like a fairy tale itself, with Andy Mooney, a former Nike executive, playing the part of prince, riding into the company on a metaphoric white horse in January 2000 to save a consumer-products division whose sales were dropping by as much as 30 percent a year. Both overstretched and underfocused, the division had triggered price wars by granting multiple licenses for core products (say, Winnie-the-Pooh undies) while ignoring the potential of new media. What’s more, Disney films like “A Bug’s Life” in 1998 had yielded few merchandising opportunities — what child wants to snuggle up with an ant?It was about a month after Mooney’s arrival that the magic struck. That’s when he flew to Phoenix to check out his first “Disney on Ice” show. “Standing in line in the arena, I was surrounded by little girls dressed head to toe as princesses,” he told me last summer in his palatial office, then located in Burbank, and speaking in a rolling Scottish burr. “They weren’t even Disney products. They were generic princess products they’d appended to a Halloween costume. And the light bulb went off. Clearly there was latent demand here. So the next morning I said to my team, ‘O.K., let’s establish standards and a color palette and talk to licensees and get as much product out there as we possibly can that allows these girls to do what they’re doing anyway: projecting themselves into the characters from the classic movies.’ ”

Mooney picked a mix of old and new heroines to wear the Pantone pink No. 241 corona: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Mulan and Pocahontas. It was the first time Disney marketed characters separately from a film’s release, let alone lumped together those from different stories. To ensure the sanctity of what Mooney called their individual “mythologies,” the princesses never make eye contact when they’re grouped: each stares off in a slightly different direction as if unaware of the others’ presence.

It is also worth noting that not all of the ladies are of royal extraction. Part of the genius of “Princess” is that its meaning is so broadly constructed that it actually has no meaning. Even Tinker Bell was originally a Princess, though her reign didn’t last. “We’d always debate over whether she was really a part of the Princess mythology,” Mooney recalled. “She really wasn’t.” Likewise, Mulan and Pocahontas, arguably the most resourceful of the bunch, are rarely depicted on Princess merchandise, though for a different reason. Their rustic garb has less bling potential than that of old-school heroines like Sleeping Beauty. (When Mulan does appear, she is typically in the kimonolike hanfu, which makes her miserable in the movie, rather than her liberated warrior’s gear.)

The first Princess items, released with no marketing plan, no focus groups, no advertising, sold as if blessed by a fairy godmother. To this day, Disney conducts little market research on the Princess line, relying instead on the power of its legacy among mothers as well as the instant-read sales barometer of the theme parks and Disney Stores. “We simply gave girls what they wanted,” Mooney said of the line’s success, “although I don’t think any of us grasped how much they wanted this. I wish I could sit here and take credit for having some grand scheme to develop this, but all we did was envision a little girl’s room and think about how she could live out the princess fantasy. The counsel we gave to licensees was: What type of bedding would a princess want to sleep in? What kind of alarm clock would a princess want to wake up to? What type of television would a princess like to see? It’s a rare case where you find a girl who has every aspect of her room bedecked in Princess, but if she ends up with three or four of these items, well, then you have a very healthy business.”

Every reporter Mooney talks to asks some version of my next question: Aren’t the Princesses, who are interested only in clothes, jewelry and cadging the handsome prince, somewhat retrograde role models?

“Look,” he said, “I have friends whose son went through the Power Rangers phase who castigated themselves over what they must’ve done wrong. Then they talked to other parents whose kids had gone through it. The boy passes through. The girl passes through. I see girls expanding their imagination through visualizing themselves as princesses, and then they pass through that phase and end up becoming lawyers, doctors, mothers or princesses, whatever the case may be.”

At the grocery store one day, my daughter noticed a little girl sporting a Cinderella backpack. “There’s that princess you don’t like, Mama!” she shouted.“Um, yeah,” I said, trying not to meet the other mother’s hostile gaze.“Don’t you like her blue dress, Mama?”I had to admit, I did.She thought about this. “Then don’t you like her face?”“Her face is all right,” I said, noncommittally, though I’m not thrilled to have my Japanese-Jewish child in thrall to those Aryan features. (And what the heck are those blue things covering her ears?) “It’s just, honey, Cinderella doesn’t really do anything.”Over the next 45 minutes, we ran through that conversation, verbatim, approximately 37 million times, as my daughter pointed out Disney Princess Band-Aids, Disney Princess paper cups, Disney Princess lip balm, Disney Princess pens, Disney Princess crayons and Disney Princess notebooks — all cleverly displayed at the eye level of a 3-year-old trapped in a shopping cart — as well as a bouquet of Disney Princess balloons bobbing over the checkout line. The repetition was excessive, even for a preschooler. What was it about my answers that confounded her? What if, instead of realizing: Aha! Cinderella is a symbol of the patriarchal oppression of all women, another example of corporate mind control and power-to-the-people! my 3-year-old was thinking, Mommy doesn’t want me to be a girl?

According to theories of gender constancy, until they’re about 6 or 7, children don’t realize that the sex they were born with is immutable. They believe that they have a choice: they can grow up to be either a mommy or a daddy. Some psychologists say that until permanency sets in kids embrace whatever stereotypes our culture presents, whether it’s piling on the most spangles or attacking one another with light sabers. What better way to assure that they’ll always remain themselves? If that’s the case, score one for Mooney. By not buying the Princess Pull-Ups, I may be inadvertently communicating that being female (to the extent that my daughter is able to understand it) is a bad thing.

“Playing princess is not the issue,” argues Lyn Mikel Brown, an author, with Sharon Lamb, of “Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketers’ Schemes.” “The issue is 25,000 Princess products,” says Brown, a professor of education and human development at Colby College. “When one thing is so dominant, then it’s no longer a choice: it’s a mandate, cannibalizing all other forms of play. There’s the illusion of more choices out there for girls, but if you look around, you’ll see their choices are steadily narrowing.”

It’s hard to imagine that girls’ options could truly be shrinking when they dominate the honor roll and outnumber boys in college. Then again, have you taken a stroll through a children’s store lately? At Toys “R” Us, aisles of pink baby dolls, kitchens, shopping carts and princesses unfurl a safe distance from the “Star Wars” figures, GeoTrax and tool chests. The relentless resegregation of childhood appears to have sneaked up without any further discussion about sex roles, about what it now means to be a boy or to be a girl. Or maybe it has happened in lieu of such discussion because it’s easier this way.

Easier, that is, unless you want to buy your daughter something that isn’t pink. Girls’ obsession with that color may seem like something they’re born with, like the ability to breathe or talk on the phone for hours on end. But according to Jo Paoletti, an associate professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, it ain’t so. When colors were first introduced to the nursery in the early part of the 20th century, pink was considered the more masculine hue, a pastel version of red. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy and faithfulness, was thought to be dainty. Why or when that switched is not clear, but as late as the 1930s a significant percentage of adults in one national survey held to that split. Perhaps that’s why so many early Disney heroines — Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Wendy, Alice-in-Wonderland — are swathed in varying shades of azure. (Purple, incidentally, may be the next color to swap teams: once the realm of kings and N.F.L. players, it is fast becoming the bolder girl’s version of pink.)The infatuation with the girlie girl certainly could, at least in part, be a reaction against the so-called second wave of the women’s movement of the 1960s and ’70s (the first wave was the fight for suffrage), which fought for reproductive rights and economic, social and legal equality. If nothing else, pink and Princess have resuscitated the fantasy of romance that that era of feminism threatened, the privileges that traditional femininity conferred on women despite its costs — doors magically opened, dinner checks picked up, Manolo Blahniks. Frippery. Fun. Why should we give up the perks of our sex until we’re sure of what we’ll get in exchange? Why should we give them up at all? Or maybe it’s deeper than that: the freedoms feminism bestowed came with an undercurrent of fear among women themselves — flowing through “Ally McBeal,” “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” “Sex and the City” — of losing male love, of never marrying, of not having children, of being deprived of something that felt essentially and exclusively female.

A few days later, I picked my daughter up from preschool. She came tearing over in a full-skirted frock with a gold bodice, a beaded crown perched sideways on her head. “Look, Mommy, I’m Ariel!” she crowed, referring to Disney’s Little Mermaid. Then she stopped and furrowed her brow. “Mommy, do you like Ariel?”I considered her for a moment. Maybe Princess is the first salvo in what will become a lifelong struggle over her body image, a Hundred Years’ War of dieting, plucking, painting and perpetual dissatisfaction with the results. Or maybe it isn’t. I’ll never really know. In the end, it’s not the Princesses that really bother me anyway. They’re just a trigger for the bigger question of how, over the years, I can help my daughter with the contradictions she will inevitably face as a girl, the dissonance that is as endemic as ever to growing up female. Maybe the best I can hope for is that her generation will get a little further with the solutions than we did.For now, I kneeled down on the floor and gave my daughter a hug.She smiled happily. “But, Mommy?” she added. “When I grow up, I’m still going to be a fireman.”

5 Popular TV Advertising Tricks – And Why They Work

The next time you're perusing your local supermarket's aisles, think about the items that you've just placed into your cart. Did you make a list and select only those items? Or did you toss a few extra products into the buggy? If you said 'yes' to the latter question, then it might be a fair assessment to say that some sort of advertisement was involved in your decision. Television commercials are not only crucial to the success of products and services, they are also incredibly entertaining. Understanding how television commercials work isn't terribly complicated. But the subtleties involved are quite fascinating. There are all sorts of tricks that advertising execs use to capture the attention of consumers. And if you pay careful attention, you can figure out how they're used to get people to buy all kinds of things...

Advertising Trick #1:Sex

Using sex and sexuality is one of the oldest tricks in the book. But you may be surprised at just frequently it is used in television commercials. Some TV ads which seem completely benign actually have very suggestive undertones. For example, advertisers for NutraGrain breakfast bars have used the slogan "You are what you eat" in order to arouse the attention of consumers who eat unhealthy breakfast foods. But in this particular ad, a woman is shown from behind. The area where her buttocks would normally be seen has been replaced by a pair of large cinnamon rolls. As she walks away, the cinnamon rolls dip and sway with each step, as a man nearby looks on. No one really associates a breakfast food (or NutraGrain) with sex, per se. But the attention drawn to the lady's buttocks reinforces the notion that if you eat cinnamon rolls for breakfast, they'll end up padding one's backside with fat. In 2005 Hardee's ran an ad featuring socialite Paris Hilton. In the advertisement, she is clad in a revealing swimsuit, soaping up a car while eating one of Hardee's juicy new burgers. This particular commercial blatantly used sexuality to grab the viewer's attention. In fact, there was much controversy over the ad, as some people felt that execs went overboard in making their burgers look attractive to consumers. In any event, since sexual urges come naturally to humans, it is still the most widely used ploy in advertisement today; reel them in with sex, then turn attention to the product.

Advertising Trick #2:The Annoying Jingle

It is common knowledge that people are better able to memorize things by using music. This is why pre-schoolers are encouraged to learn their ABCs by singing them. The same concept applies in television advertising. But in this case, ad execs employ all sorts of audible cues to obtain the attention of consumers. But, consumers do not always associate the enjoyable songs they hear in commercials with a particular brand name. In many cases, a viewer may remember the song, and even the imagery in the commercial, but not the actual product being sold. Ironically it is the annoying jingles that are quite effective in getting people to remember a certain product or service. Take for instance, Empire Today, a carpet installation company. In this commercial, the company's toll free number is sung in a reasonably obnoxious jingle. The creative minds behind the commercial are not hoping that you'll actually enjoy the song; they are hoping that you'll remember two key items: the phone number, and the company name-both of which make up almost the entire jingle. Other commercials have followed suit. TitleMax, a car title pawn and loan company has employed an actress to repeatedly sing about "the money, the money, the real, moneyyyy" (much to viewers' chagrin.) And there are plenty of blogs in which consumers rant about how irritating the Head On headache medicine commercials are. The truth is that it is often easier to capture someone's attention with negative stimuli, as it is with positive. If you recall how annoying a commercial's jingle is, chances are that you'll probably remember the product.

Advertising Trick #3:The Absurd

The executives behind the latest commercial for Amica Auto Insurance Company have mastered the art of utilizing completely absurd situations in order to get a point across to consumers. In a television spot, various people are seen climbing into vehicles that are entirely impractical for their personal need: a husband man has bought a tiny car that won't hold all the members of the his family for a family vacation; a short woman on her way to work is seen climbing with a ladder into a pick-up truck with monster tires; and another man is shown deliverying newspapers from an RV. The platform in this ad is that the same care that people take in choosing their automobiles should be extended to their choice in auto insurance plans. Companies will often use extreme comparisons and analogies when attempting to convince potential customers to buy their goods. The concept is very similar to the usage of metaphors and similes in poetry. Both are used to provide a mental picture for the reader. In the case of television commercials, the analogies are visual instead of literary. It is these absurd visualizations that help consumers to remember what the product is for, and thus will make the decision to buy.

Advertising Trick #4: "Fantasy" Imagery

Have you ever noticed how lush, shiny, and healthy the models' hair looks in those Pantene Pro-V commercials? Perhaps you've taken note of how luxurious the scenery is in commercials for products like Downy fabric softener, or even Glade air freshening products. Since consumers cannot smell through the television, very often, advertisement execs will provide a sort of "fantasy" landscape and/or imagery in order to appeal to viewers' other senses. Seeing an open field with rows and rows of flowers automatically conveys that the product being offered smells fresh and wonderful. Bottled water companies use ads which focus on cooling and refreshing their customers. Thus, in those ads, lots of crisp water-filled images usually fill up the TV screen. If one can associate a certain product or service with one of his/her senses, more than likely that person will remember the ad. And subliminally, the message is sent that the product being sold can provide results similar to what's being shown in the commercial.

Advertising Trick #5:The Testimonial

Word of mouth is still the most effective method of advertising. This is because people are more likely to rely on the opinions of their peers where it regards products and services. Advertisers use this concept in the form of the "Testimonial." In all likelihood, anyone who is privy to watching daytime television has noticed that ads for lawyers and vocational schools are rampant at this particular hour. Training facilities like Everest Institute and Georgia Medical Institute use real students to explain to viewers how much their lives have been enhanced by attending these schools. Other organizations, like the Atlanta law firm of Ken Nugent, P.C., use actors who portray actual clients. By using the "testimonial", advertisers are hoping that consumers will see the actors and clients as peers whose opinions they can trust.

Five clues that you are addicted to Facebook
By Elizabeth Cohen(CNN) --

One day recently, Cynthia Newton's 12-year-old daughter asked her for help with homework, but Newton didn't want to help her, because she was too busy on Facebook. So her daughter went upstairs to her room and sent an e-mail asking her for help, but Newton didn't see the e-mail, because, well, she was too busy on Facebook.

"I'm an addict. I just get lost in Facebook," Newton said. "My daughter gets so PO'd at me, and really it is kind of pathetic. It's not something I'm particularly proud of. I just get so sucked in."

Newton (that's not her real name; she's embarrassed by her Facebook use and requested anonymity) says she spends about 20 hours a week on the social networking site, half the time for work -- she runs an online business -- and half just for fun. She's tried to cut down on her Facebook use but failed."I can go a whole day without Facebook," she said. "But I've never made it through an entire weekend."

Although there are no statistics on "Facebook addiction" -- it isn't an actual medical diagnosis -- therapists say they're seeing more and more people like Newton who've crossed the line from social networking to social dysfunction."Last Friday, I had three clients in my office with Facebook problems," said Paula Pile, a marriage and family therapist in Greensboro, North Carolina. "It's turned into a compulsion -- a compulsion to dissociate from your real world and go live in the Facebook world."Pile and the other therapists interviewed for this article were quick to say that Facebook itself isn't the problem and that the vast majority of its 200 million users probably function just fine."I'm on it myself," Pile said. "My daughter just got married, and I got great happiness posting her wedding pictures for all my friends to see."She says problems arise when users ignore family and work obligations because they find the Facebook world a more enjoyable place to spend time than the real world.Newton says she checks Facebook first thing when she wakes up, and then she checks her Facebook page as many as seven times while at work, and then she'll check Facebook again when she gets home and one more time before she goes to sleep. If you've been keeping count, that's about 10 times a day.A single parent, Newton includes "Facebook flirting" with men and meeting up with old schoolmates among her favorite activities."One old friend told me he had a huge crush on me in kindergarten, and it tore him apart when we weren't put in the same class in first grade," she said. "When I read that, it was like, wow. I blushed at my computer. I had no idea I was so important to him. It felt very real and warm and dear."The problem is that it's not real, says Joanna Lipari, a clinical psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. She compares Facebook to "The Truman Show," the 1998 Jim Carrey movie about a fabricated world where nothing ever goes wrong."Facebook is a fun, pleasant, happy, beautiful world. People only present the crème de la crème of their lives on Facebook. And these people want to be your friends! It's very seductive."It's especially seductive when real life isn't going so well, Pile adds."In real life, people have morning breath, and you have to pay bills with them, and you argue about who's going to change the baby's diaper," she said. "But Facebook is happyland. You don't have to deal with any of that."Newton says she knows all this and is frustrated at how much time she spends on Facebook, given that she has a job and a child."I've thought about going cold turkey, but that would make me so uncomfortable. I know I couldn't do it."

You know you're a Facebook addict when ...

1. You lose sleep over Facebook

"If you're staying up late at night because you're on Facebook, and you're tired the next day, Facebook may be a compulsion for you," Lipari said. "You shouldn't be neglecting yourself because of Facebook."

2. You spend more than an hour a day on Facebook

Pile says it's hard to pinpoint exactly how much is too much time to be spending on social networking."I can't imagine that anyone would need more than an hour a day on Facebook, and probably no one needs more than 30 minutes," she said.

3. You become obsessed with old loves

Reconnecting with old friends is one of the great attractions of Facebook, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with "friending" an old boyfriend or girlfriend. But Pile warns that it can get out of hand very quickly."One of my clients met up with an old boyfriend on Facebook. They started spending hours and hours into the night talking to each other on Facebook. She made some really inappropriate comments about how unhappy she was in her marriage," Pile said. "Her cousin saw the comments and told her parents, and the parents told the husband, and now they're in the process of getting divorced."

4. You ignore work in favor of Facebook

"If you're not doing your job in order to sneak time on Facebook, you could have a real problem," Lipari said.

5. The thought of getting off Facebook leaves you in a cold sweat

Pile has her own quick test: "Try going a day without Facebook. If you find it causes you a lot of stress and anxiety, you really need to get some help."She has also devised a longer test that can help you decide if your Facebook use has become a compulsion:

The Facebook Compulsion Inventory

Directions: Please circle your answer to each of the questions using the following scale:1. Very Untrue. 2. Somewhat Untrue. 3. Neither True nor Untrue. 4. Somewhat True. 5. Very True.1.

I spend more time on Facebook than I intend to. 1 2 3 4 52. I feel anxious and upset when I cannot access my Facebook page. 1 2 3 4 53. I have more in common with the people I chat with on Facebook than I have with my spouse or partner. 1 2 3 4 54. I find myself neglecting some of my work responsibilities because of time I spend on Facebook. 1 2 3 4 55. Sometimes I lose sleep because of the time I spend on Facebook. 1 2 3 4 56. I have developed romantic feelings for someone I have reconnected with on Facebook. 1 2 3 4 57. Spending time on Facebook with my Facebook friends is more pleasant than the time I spend with my spouse or partner. 1 2 3 4 58. I lie to others about what I talk to friends about on Facebook. 1 2 3 4 59. I feel excited and energized when I access my Facebook page. 1 2 3 4 510. I would feel sad and depressed if Facebook ceased to exist. 1 2 3 4 511. I have concealed conversations that I have on Facebook from my partner. 1 2 3 4 512. I would not want my spouse or partner to be my Facebook friend. 1 2 3 4 513. I need to make sure that I have access to my Facebook page on vacations. 1 2 3 4 514. I feel that others would think less of me if they could see my private messages on Facebook. 1 2 3 4 515. Others have complained about the amount of time I spend on Facebook. 1 2 3 4 5

SCORING

15-30 You probably enjoy using Facebook, however it is unlikely that it is causing major issues in your relationship.31- 45 You obviously enjoy using Facebook and it is most likely an important part of your life, but it is probably not controlling you.46-60 Your Facebook use is quite possibly excessive. You may be experiencing some difficulties in your life and relationships as a result of your Facebook use. You may want to consider ways to reconnect and connect with your family and friends that do not involve Facebook. If you continue to find yourself using Facebook as a major way to meet your emotional and social needs, it is important that you put more time back into your primary relationships outside of Facebook, or seek professional help.60-75 Your Facebook use appears to be compulsive. It would most likely be helpful to seek a professional therapist to help you sort out the role Facebook plays in your life.Copyright 2009Paula Pile MA, LMFT, LPA