Ann Simonton is not just a pretty face, and she proved it Tuesday night to a packed house in Memorial Union’s Great Hall.

Simonton is a former model who appeared on the covers of Glamour, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Bride magazines and in numerous TV commercials before she took off from her lucrative career in the mid-’80s to dedicate her life to exposing media bias.

She is the founder and director of Media Watch, an established foe of the Miss America program, a former Feminist Heroine of the Year and a creator of educational videos.

Tuesday, she appeared at the Union as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series hosted by the Wisconsin Union Directorate.

“Most people understand that advertisers control the content of what we see,” she said. “They target children nine years old and upwards. Eight million children are forced to watch commercial television each day.”

Simonton said the media directly affects how people form an individual entity. “You want the product more than you want the relationship,” Simonton said, speaking of ads that seem to speak to the viewer’s heart.

Simonton related a person’s natural tendencies toward reality television, saying, “We all want to sneak a peek into someone’s life.”

But Simonton warned the audience reality television can be dangerous in the end because, she said, it becomes another instrument of commercial psychological control. She described beer ads that use expectations about women’s bodies and behavior to sell.

“Often our own rebellion is used to sell back to us,” she said. “Women are an implied bonus that goes along with the drinking.”

Simonton was also concerned with facts involving alcohol consumption. “Ten percent of the drinkers consume 60 percent of the alcohol,” she told the audience. “Kids can name more kinds of beers than presidents.”

Sophomore Stacey Leigh enjoyed the speech, especially the way Simonton used visuals to demonstrate her points.

Late in the speech, while making a point about how degradation and violence toward women manifests in advertising and other media such as pornography, Simonton displayed a photo of a badly beaten women. She spotlighted a caption underneath that read, “Someone who loved me did this.”

“What they are actually doing,” Simonton said, “is selling something much more blatant.”

“I liked the way she used all the pictures to illustrate her point,” Leigh said. “I’ve seen some of the ads she showed before, but I never really thought about them the way she does.”

Simonton continued to show pictures of women who she said “can’t wait to be raped” and asked the audience how ads affect all women in general. Specifically, Simonton targeted the magazine Hustler and displayed an ad with a woman saying, “Let me call you Daddy,” and an article entitled “How To Know If Your Girlfriend’s A Dog.”

Simonton’s visuals were blatant, but some audience members also found them transparent. Graduate student Jason Melichar, who said he agreed with Simonton’s arguments to a point, also suggested consumers play a role in the advertising culture.

“It’s about buying and selling when you come down to it,” Melichar said. “If you don’t like the ad, don’t buy the product. I’m not sure it’s worth devoting your life to attack commercials.”

“These are attacks on nameless women,” Simonton said. “They are the ones feeling the brunt of this.”