Sex Sells!

Blog 3

      The media portraying women are quite negative because of the sexual exploitation of females; however, sex sells. Most of these images are unrealistic, but a lot of people do not know that. The marketers’ goal for selling an item is to sell a lifestyle. If you look at a lot of advertisements, the advertisements usually have nothing to do with the product, but, usually, points to a sexier lifestyle (getting the girl or multiple girls, or you will look and smell tempting) if this product is bought. Since sex sells, many advertisements have a pornographic style in which the advertisers are selling sex to their customers instead of a product. In the pornography world, recently, gang rape (as seen in a Dolce and Gabbana ad for shoes) or male domination over females is very popular right now, now this concept has crept into the advertising world. Advertisers are using

…a “habit of thinking”, an everyday pornographic discourse (including words and pictures) that sexualizes denigration and domination as it also genders it, with “the man” being on top, and the objectified, exposed, denigrated on the bottom being “the woman” (Caputi, p.311).

Women are being exploited and degraded in many advertisements. If one looks closely, many women pose with their mouths sort of open indicating a sexual gesture (waiting for something to be put into her mouth), if there is a fully or half naked model one would rarely see her face, and if there was a fully clothed model she would have to sell sex through her face (open mouths, winks) or body language (open legs). The fully naked models do not have to do much with their face because their already being sexual by showing off their body, which is why a lot of times the models faces are cut off or facing in another direction than the camera because they do not have to sell sex through their face. I did notice that perfume ads are more likely to have naked or sexualized advertisements than other brands. For example, there is a cologne ad that shows a man with multiple girls hanging on him, which is the norm for cologne ads to have a girl or more posing with the men because they want the male customer to believe he will pick up chicks easily if wearing this cologne.

To me, this puts a dark cloud on the 85% of the female population who look nothing like skinny, sexy models. Due to this stigma, the population will think something is wrong with them or that they need to look and act like what they are seeing in the media. I believe advertisers should be held responsible for anorexia, depression, and bulimia among young women and girls who look nothing like the models they see, but, yet, will try very hard to look like those models so they feel like they belong in this society and can get men. How is this society allowing dehumanizing pictures always popping up as though it is ok? A couple advertisements, I have seen, was a girl in a trunk with her legs hanging out. This is a symbol of rap and murder as though it is ok to throw a woman in the back of the trunk who is possibly dead by strangulation and/or rape. A lot of these advertisements are seen in the everyday life. This all trickles back to the head honcho who makes all the decisions (the white, rich man). This is a way to keep women down and being submissive in America, which then helps the men out because they can keep becoming rich and powerful by stepping on others.

Good link to check out: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/tag/objectification/page/2/

References

Caputi, J. (2011). The pornography of everyday life. In G. Dines & J. Humez (Ed.). Gender,

race, and class in media (pp. 311-320). Thousand Oaks, C.A.: Sage.

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