Sweet Briar field hockey coach Jennifer Crispen remembers the last time Jean Kilbourne was at Sweet Briar College. It was 1981 and she packed the house – “standing room only,” Crispen says.

Jean KilbourneOn Sunday, April 13, Kilbourne, internationally known lecturer and author of “Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel,” will return to Sweet Briar.

Her lecture, “Deadly Persuasion: Advertising and Addiction,” will be held at 7 p.m. at Murchison Lane Auditorium. A book signing will follow.

Admission is free, but tickets are required. For tickets, e-mail kilbourne@sbc.edu.

Kilbourne’s talk will focus on advertising and how it affects decisions to smoke and drink alcohol, as well as how it relates to body image. It is a message Crispen and others at Sweet Briar consider particularly relevant for young women.

“I just thought it was time to have somebody who’s going to really look at how hard it is to ignore social influences and to remind students that it’s not really what’s expected of you,” Crispen said. “It’s a manipulation.”

Debbie Kasper, assistant professor of sociology, agreed. “Jean Kilbourne’s work is academically important in many interesting ways, but more than that, it is relevant to all of us who live in a media-saturated society, especially young women,” she said.

“[She] cites a statistic about the average American being exposed to over three thousand advertisements a day. Such a pervasive and taken-for-granted presence becomes a very powerful force of influence.

“Advertising shapes perceptions of what is good, beautiful, desirable, worthwhile and so on, and profoundly affects how we act in and see the world. Kilbourne’s lectures demonstrate these effects – largely invisible to us – in a way that is smart, humorous and sometimes shocking.”

For more information on Kilbourne’s lecture, e-mail Crispen at crispen@sbc.edu.

— By Suzanne Ramsey, SBC staff writer