<p>I did a practice essay for the SAT writing today...any comments and criticism would be appreciated. Please score on a scale of 1-6. </p>
<p>In the early 1990s, journalist Karen Stabiner spent a year observing the operation of Chiat/Day, an award-winning advertising agency in Los Angeles, California. She then wrote a book about the advertising business, with a title reflecting what she believed to be the primary goal of advertising: Inventing Desire.</p>
<p>Assignment: Do you believe it is possible for advertising (magazine ads, radio spots, TV commercials) to invent desire, that is, to create in people a need to have something they otherwise would not have wanted? Plan and write an
essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.</p>
<p>Advertising is not just a business, but a world that stimulates and inflames the senses. An advertisement, whether it is for an expensive perfume or a warm and sticky cinnamon bun, invents colors, scents and tastes that are sometimes otherworldly. Unforutnately, it is through this sensory extravaganza that advertisements prey on the ultimate human weakness: desire. Desire, though sometimes beneficial, often leads to serious conflicts. Buddhists believe that desire is the cause of human suffering. The effects of advertising only serve to demonstrate this idea.</p>
<p>In this fast-paced technological era, we are exposed to advertising at an early age. "Want" is one of the first verbs many children learn. Advertisements fill our world. We see them on billboards, television and the internet. Recently, individuals have even been selling their body parts for advertising purposes in online auctions. From birth we live in a world that tells
individuals not only what they want, but what they need. It is no wonder that children are quickly becoming more materialistic and own more toys and games than they have in previous decades. A look at any morning cartoon's advertising block shows how bombarded children really are. Their eyes are glued to images of toys, clothes and candy. These images often have the potential to invade a child's mind and take over their desires. Children are not born wanting every popular toy; TV tells them what is popular and what they must have. Advertising invents desire in innocent minds and these innocent
minds grow up to want even more. </p>
<p>Some may argue that advertising only intensifies the desires that we already have. However, it is hard to believe that every woman wants a new pair of shoes or that every man needs a new watch. Advertising agencies use the inherent characteristics of mass culture to spark desire; if one person has something, it isn't long before everyone else wants it. This leads to dissatisfaction because no individual can have everything at once. New foods and products are always being invented. Before we can buy everything, new things are created and we simply can't keep up. Many Americans are caught in this frenzied and destructive cycle. Bank accounts are overdrawn and cars are repossessed because of our insatiable desires.</p>
<p>When the time comes to blame someone or something for the problems caused by desire, it is difficult to pinpoint a single entity. It is unfair to blame advertising agencies for our own gullibility. Advertisements may cause us to desire things we did not originally crave, but it is personal responsibility that prevents one from emptying one's wallet. Perhaps we should all slow down and take a lesson from the Buddhists. Although advertisements invent
desires, only we can tame them.</p>