Let me translate for you.

Extra-extra! Read all about it.

“I had sex orgy with Brittany Spears” crazed fan tells all
Extra-extra! Read all about it.
Joan Rivers 75th facelift makes her look younger than her granddaughter.
Extra-extra! Read all about it.
Media is conning you into paralytic fear and abject despair expounding goals you can never attain.

Are you happy with your life partner? Do you find yourself paging through magazines and asking yourself “why can’t I have someone like that?” Well ask no longer ‘cos now you can. Welcome to the new age. The age of happiness, the age of prosperity, the age of having the life partner that you want, no, that you deserve. Welcome to Live-Science Airbrushing. Send us your old, used, broken-down life-partner and in a few short days we’ll return them to you, rejuvenated, revamped, renewed, reupholstered. It’s your life partner, only better.
And so it goes. And so we’re told. You deserve better. You deserve more. More money, more free time, more muscle, more car, more sex. You’re a unique snowflake. There’s no one quite like you so you should have the best. You should have what everyone else has; a Lexus 300 S.U.X.

And we listen, and we hear them, and we think
“Yes! I do deserve more. I do deserve a Lexus 300 S.U.X. I’m a unique snowflake!!”

But we don’t hear what they are really saying.
Let me translate for you:
“You deserve more.”
You don’t have enough.
“You deserve more free time”
Your job consumes your life.
“You deserve more muscle.”
You’re unattractive.
“You deserve to drop a dress size.”
You’re fat.
“You deserve more sex”
You’re unloved.

A prime example is the Ford Fiesta advert. It opens on a man sitting alone on a bench. Next to him is an open space which obviously used to be filled by his loving girlfriend and it follows him showing her absence. A bathroom scene with him, alone, at a 2 basin vanity wearing a "his" gown, an empty space next to him on the movie couch and him struggling on a 2 seater bicycle. All showing that what was once there is now no longer.

The final scene ties the story together. Our heartbroken loser is walking across the park pulling petals off a flower. The image immediately says “She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me, she loves me not.”
Suddenly out of a house across the street bursts his girlfriend, waving. He looks up as if heaven has answered his prayers, but, she laughingly jumps into the passenger seat of a new Ford Fiesta and speeds off with its new owner. The final insult to our intelligence is the catch phrase which burns itself white against a black background: “Live Sexy”

Let me translate for you.
If you don’t have a Ford Fiesta, a machine, a vehicle that transports you from A to B, then your girlfriend, who loves you, who you love, will leave you for someone who does. Your value as a person which we measure through how much we are loved is diminished by not having a Ford Fiesta.
On principle I will never ever buy a Ford ever in my life.

But it is not only in advertising that we are lied to. The media tells us of stars, celebrities, that are constantly going to parties, driving fast cars, living in 100 million dollar palaces, being adored by millions and we consume that information with a macabre fascination all the while turning a deaf ear to what is really being said. Your life is not as grand nor as interesting. You, by comparison, obviously are not as valued.

Do people like to hear that? Do people like to hear negative things? Because gilded in its hype about their lives lies the negation of your life.
Who are they to negate you?
Who are they to say you’re not valuable?
Who are they to make you doubt yourself because you don’t drive a Ford Fiesta?

Your value as a person does not depend on what the media tells you.
Your value as a person is what you chose it to be.
The only person who can value you is yourself and the only system of values you can apply is your own.

Unfortunately we live in a world in where the media attempts to model our value systems for a profit. Short of gouging out our eyes and ears with sharp sticks we cannot escape it. They say in the valley of the blind, the one eyed man is king.

I want to leave you with one last example. A woman runs through the forest. She passes other runners, cyclists, people doing yoga and swimmers using a pool ladder(?) to climb out of a lake. She then arrives at a water fountain, drinks from it and makes flirtatious eye-contact with a handsome, eligible man. The camera pans back as she returns to her treadmill to retrieve her towel and the logo for Virgin Active overlays the image.

In the Values of the blind the one-eyed man is king… open your eyes.