Role Of Advertising In James Tiptree's The Girl Who Was Plugged In

In the short science-fiction novel The Girl Who Was Plugged In by James Tiptree, Jr. (the pen name of Alice Bradley Sheldon), formal advertising as it is known has been banned. However, the businessmen of the fictitious GTX cooperation have no problems getting around this new law. They know, just as the advertising executives of today know, that it is human instinct to admire and emulate the actions of those they view as successful, and that people will covet the products and services they see being used by the beautiful and glamorous. People will always strive for the fame and fortune of the celebrities they see parading across their television screens and plastered on magazine covers. There are times when these role models can be positive;
What’s harder is defining exactly why those people are so well-known. The celebrity today is more commonly famous solely for the sake of being famous, rather than for possessing any true talent. In an editorial cartoon from Investor’s Business Daily, this point is illustrated quite bluntly. In the image, a young, pig-tailed girl sits at the base of an ancient Mayan temple, on a slab that reads “CELEBRITY WORSHIP.” She looks up at her mother and father, standing beside her, and expresses her desire to be “just like” a number of celebrities: the previously mentioned Paris, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Anna Nicole Smith. He parents, wearing traditional sacrificial headdresses and holding a skull-encrusted knife, reply to her, “Of course… after we remove your brain.” The caption of this cartoon is “The Human Sacrifice,” a blunt and fitting title. If the girl really were to have her “brain removed” and become as shallow and fame-seeking as the celebrities she mentions, it really would be the loss of a human life. The women she mentions as her role models are known prominently, or solely, for their scandalous lifestyles. It would be a waste of talent, the deprivation of a possibly great contribution to society if this child were to emulate the promiscuous, partying ways of these females she sees as ideal, that she finds ideal only because that
Some tragically developing eating disorders, such as Mary-Kate Olsen and her battle with anorexia and bulimia (Tauber, Smolowe). While this is heartbreaking for the celebrity, it can be equally as devastating to those that idealize them. Some people will see these stories and conclude that starving themselves or binging and purging is the only way to achieve the figures that they find desirable, or are told to find desirable. In truth, in doing this they are only hurting themselves not just physically, but psychologically. Celebrities set the bar of physical beauty so high that even they can have trouble reaching it, much less the average, everyday