Lily Cole Quotes

I was asked to be in Vogue but I said no. I didn't want to advertise make-up. I didn't want to be seen as a sex symbol.

The publicity image steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product.

I do voiceovers, but being on-camera and selling something? I wasn't really interested. And then I thought, well, wait a minute. Everybody's selling something. When you turn on the tube... And then if you go to Europe or Asia, everyone is selling something. All the guys that don't want to be seen selling something here are selling something there. So I thought what the hell?

The interesting thing about advertising is that the things that annoy us sometimes about it are really human. It's us looking at ourselves - and like all human endeavors it's imperfect.

Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.

I don't really know what my personality is anyway. I don't really have one.

What we want is a social harmony, even as we live in a world where any idea about 'the real thing' is as likely to evoke the ancient memory of an advertisement for a soda pop as anything solid or necessary.

By creating so many illusory images of physical perfection, whether on store aisles or storefront ads, magazine covers or TV shows, we speak more to the profit margins of companies than the self-esteem of today's girls.

Philosophically, I don't like doing commercials.

One goes on with the blithe belief that who you really are is transparent to everybody. Then you realise, with some horror, that in fact it's not. So all you can do is keep muddying the waters a bit.

We all have to be dishes on a plate eventually, with the way we are marketed, but I have no intention of being a cheap Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet.

Women's bodies are used to sell anything and everything because it works, it grabs people's attention, and advertisers aren't going to stop using something that works.

Modeling is basically 'Buy more stuff! Don't you want some more stuff? It will make you look ten years younger and men will like you!' If I'd wanted to be a salesperson, I would have got a job selling.

I think people are learning to actually aspire to be objectified.

Advertising gets such a bashing from the world. At parties you are always asked, 'Aren't you just selling people things they don't want?'

Is advertising moral? It is part and parcel of the American free enterprise system... I challenge anybody to show any economic system that has done as much for so many in so short a time.

I would like people to know me for who I am, especially since I think people have a very skewed image of me. I was playing a lot of cute characters, a lot of little girls; I was objectified. And I don't want people to think of me as that because it's not who I am, and because I've seen a lot of hostility towards that image.

Children's television has been grossly over-commercialized. The subtle message is, "Buy me! Buy me!

Advertising's always been a considerable pressure on publishers.

I don't like ads. I don't like selling things. That's not me.

Advertising is a symbol-manipulating occupation

Brands are selling our self-esteem back to us, through association. We need to own our brands.

Throughout their lives, women try to pummel their bodies into some phantom ideal shape that exists only with a lot of airbrushing. ... I don't blame men for this. Men seem to go for us no matter what size and shape we are. I blame capitalism. No, really. The consumer must constantly be in a state of anxious low self-esteem so that she will constantly buy lipsticks and girdles to make her feel cuter.

When I revealed the campaign, some lady in the front row, a photographer, asked "is that airbrushed?" So I just lifted my shirt up and my stomach was the exact same thing as in the ads. It was actually kinda nice that she said that, because I'm sure plenty of people probably thought that. That's one of the reasons I did it - especially when you work so hard to get your body to look like that - it's frustrating.