Michel Foucault’s prisoner dilemma relates power and knowledge within power relationships. The media, which possesses ultimate power in governing print material, is based on knowledge of human nature i.e. the misconstrued notion of beauty, personal value, vulnerability, admiration, race, class, and gender etc. The media, the prisoner guard, hawks its audience, the women, and deeply analyzes their subconscious desires in order to produce a product that will prey on those desires.

 
The discrimination that the print media portrays further affects readers/viewers who do not acknowledge that power is socially normalized and institutionalizes the patriarchal values of domination and oppression that exploit women in magazines. By promoting these patriarchal values it is evident that we are far from an egalitarian society and that non-egalitarian (i.e. capitalistic social orders) societies CANNOT assume that technology, in this case print media, is a neutralized process that is beneficial along race, class, and gender lines when evidence shows that a larger social context has constrained the development of technology. In conclusion, print media adopts the “sex sells” slogan and motto in order to increase revenues while decreasing human value.