The aim of this study is to discuss image theory through an interdisciplinary approach, from a designer`s point of view. The subject is a collection of 306 advertising images published in various issues of three women`s magazines focused on fashion, beauty and shopping: Jalouse (from France), Elle (from the USA) and Nova (the Brazilian edition of USA-based Cosmopolitan). The advertising images in printed media - here named images of consumption - are based on everyday stereotypes. They reflect and translate concepts and values widely shared. They sell goods and are themselves also sold as standards for the construction of the imaginary of consumption. This study is presented in the following format: an initial contextualization, in which the construction of appearances and the market are linked; the central part, showing the research, its field (images in the magazine advertisements), its subject (the magazines) and its purpose (to know how beauty and behavior patterns are consumed and assimilated); and a general analysis of the collection of digitalized images, concerning their formal and rhetorical aspects and the strategies they use to enrich the brand names symbolically. Nine examples are used to illustrate the research. Throughout this study, aspects of the image and of the body as a product and as a sign are discussed. The conclusions show that the body is trespassed by images - a collage of scattered references connecting us to imaginary worlds - and that the current strategy used in advertising is to interchange the body and the goods, both being equivalent signs in the market.