Thursday night, we left our advertising job for the day, drove deep into the Washington Park hood, wolfed down our freighter-sized BLT and bag of salt and vinegar chips in the parking garage, and made our way into the New Gym at The Bush School, which is apparently insanely cool. (Hello? A whole program on diversity? Seniors fundraising so they can attend their second White Privilege Conference?). There we witnessed the brilliance of Jean Kilbourne, superstar lecturer.

Kilbourne is more in demand on college campuses than Dave Matthews ever was—even at his peak in the '90s (not that we recall). In fact, she's spoken at half of all U.S. colleges and universities, and along the way received consecutive Lecturer of the Year awards from the National Association for Campus Activities. Her groundbreaking, award-winning book and documentaries shed light on advertising's powerful role in creating a toxic cultural environment in which women are seen as objects, addiction and starvation are encouraged, and children are taught to revere the almighty brand. The bottom line? Our very freedom and well-being is at stake, and she's trying to wake us the hell up.

To set the stage, Kilbourne quoted Rance Crain, editor-in-chief of Advertising Age; "Only eight percent of an ad's message is received by the conscious mind; the rest is worked and reworked deep within the recesses of the brain...." Seeing as though we're served up approximately 3,000 ads a day (you're probably being exposed to one right now, on this very page), our brains are clearly working overtime, processing commercial messaging. According to Kilbourne, that makes advertising "one of the most persuasive and pervasive forces" at work in our society. Only by becoming aware of this unconscious process can we make it conscious and thereby take back our power, health and sanity.

Kilbourne illuminated for us the deeper meaning and messages behind a range of messed up ads featuring the emaciated, poreless and dismembered bodies of women: a torso morphed with a beer bottle, and so becoming a thing; a pale, leggy corpse hanging out of the trunk of a car so as to showcase designer shoes; Katie Couric's extreme electronic makeover. It’s no wonder eating disorders and violence against women continue at such disturbing rates when women are constantly presented as weak, vulnerable, sub-human and not worthy of taking up space. But what disturbed us most, what enraged us to no end, was the revelation that some parents are now giving plastic surgery as graduation presents. To quote Bill Cosby, “Come on people!”

Yes, we’ve studied these issues before. And to be honest, we wish Kilbourne had gone deeper into the subjects at hand (that must be what her book and videos are for). But Thursday’s lecture was invaluable. The audience was largely made up of parents and high school students, which gave us some reason to hope. Together, with Kilbourne’s sharp wit and 35 years of wisdom as our guide, we alternately laughed at the nonsense, and gasped at the horror, of it all.

We then headed back out across Seattle, questioning our profession and feeling determined to do our part in making this often infuriating culture of ours a little less toxic (advocating for media education and a ban on advertising to children would be a fantastic start). Oh, and we felt not a bit guilty for having eaten a giant BLT with a bag of salt and vinegar chips. Screw you, Dexatrim.

Kilbourne’s new book, So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids, is clearly a must-read.