[rswerve]

What a great way to put it. I went looking and it’s from John Berger’s Ways of Seeing.

> The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product. She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself. One could put this another way: the publicity image steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product.

https://www.ways-of-seeing.com/ch7