Occasionally the UN has little exhibits in the main hall to shine a light on a cause or a movement or an injustice. This one was making a point about the evolution of magazine ads and how they reflected and shaped the culture and the changing roles of men and women in society and power imbalances. But it had a different effect on me. The splashes of colour and glossy images reminded me of the heyday of magazines and the hours I would spend browsing them at newsstands and imagining myself in the roles they sold its readers. Newspapers were coldly informative and TV was ephemeral and fleeting but magazines could be studied and held in your hands. If the goal of the ads was to make you want to express yourself through products then they worked on me. I wanted the clothes the cars and the hair gels. Then, naturally all the other spoils would fall into place, presumably. The career, the women, the trips to the South of France. The more insidious messages about gender must have seeped in a little too. Those and the ones about consumerism must still cling to me now, the way those cologne inserts would linger on the pages long after you threw the little scented cardboard strips away.