People were outraged that Nike considered this type of thing a joke. A recent Perry Ellis sequence showed a woman apparently dead in a shower with a man standing over her; that one drew protests, too. But ads often feature images of women being threatened, attacked or killed. Sexual assault and battery are normalized, even eroticized.

In one ad a woman lies dead on a bed with her breasts exposed and her hair sprawled out around her, and the copy reads, "Great hair never dies." A perfume ad that ran in several teen magazines showed a very young woman with her eyes blackened, next to the text "Apply generously to your neck so he can smell the scent as you shake your head 'no.'" In other words, he'll understand that you don't really mean it when you say no, and he can respond like any other animal.

An ad for a bar in Georgetown with a close-up of a cocktail had the headline "If your date won't listen to reason, try a velvet hammer." That's really dangerous when you consider how many sexual assaults involve alcohol in some way. We believe we are not affected by these images, but most of us experience visceral shock when we pay conscious attention to them.

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Are there subtler forms of abuse in ads?

There's a lot of emotional violence in ads. For example, in one cologne ad a handsome man ignores two beautiful blonds. The copy reads, "Do you want to be the one she tells her deep, dark secrets to? Or do you want to be her deep, dark secret?" followed by a final instruction: "Don't be such a good boy." What's the deep, dark secret here? That he's sleeping with both of them? On one level the message is that the way to get beautiful women is to ignore them, perhaps mistreat them. The message to men is that emotional intimacy is not a good thing. This does terrible things to men, and of course to women too.

There are also many, many ads in which women are pitted against each other for male attention. For example, there's one ad with a topless woman on a bed and the copy "What the bitch who's about to steal your man wears." Other ads feature young women fighting or glaring at each other. This means that when girls hit adolescence, at a time when they most need support from each other, they're encouraged to turn on each other in competition for men. It's tragic, because the truth is that one of the most powerful antidotes to destructive cultural messages is close and supportive female friendships.

Over the years we've grown more accustomed to product placements in movies, but "What Women Want" takes advertiser-driven content to a new level. I tried to keep a running count, but there were so many I lost track: Sears, L'eggs, Wonderbra, Macintosh, Martha Stewart, CNN, Meredith Brooks and Alanis Morissette CD covers all get prominent plugs.

The final commercial Gibson pitches to the Nike reps was similar in style, tone and prime-time-friendly slogan to sports ads we've seen on TV before. Would you be surprised if Nike's fake ad eventually traveled from the big screen to the small screen? How did we get to a point where the whole premise of a film rests on product placements?

I wouldn't be surprised at all. In fact, the ad in the movie was made in connection with Wieden + Kennedy, Nike's real-life ad agency. But Nike doesn't really need to pay to broadcast the commercial on TV, since this film was so successful at the box office -- there couldn't be a better launch for a commercial than this movie.

I think this is the wave of the future. As more and more people use their VCR to skip the commercials when they watch television, the commercials will begin to become part of the program so they can't be edited out. So while you're watching "Friends," Jennifer Aniston will say to Courteney Cox, "Your hair looks great," and Courteney will say, "Yeah, I'm using this new gel!"

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