From Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature, by Janice Radway: “…it legitimates through assertion the notion that commodity consumption is an adequate and effective way to negate the ‘pain’ produced by the disappointments, imperfections, and small failures that are an inevitable part of human life. It is worth observing, however, that an advertising’s offer of happiness is nothing but a promise of vicarious experience. As a discursive form, it presents satisfaction, contentment, and pride, not as a result of an individual’s actions or social intercourse with others, but as a natural consequence of the activity of consuming or displaying a particular product. Happiness is not an emotional condition one creates for oneself through action; in advertising, it is a thing that one can buy.”