Sex Sells
You only have to go on one dodgy website or even some social media to know sex is everywhere. The pop-up ad’s “*insert sexual adjective* singles in your area” right there alongside “This woman discovered this tip, and now the doctors hate her” click-bait titles that will almost certainly result in your computer catching a virus should you actually click on one.
Other more safe for work adverts are less on the nose with their sexual undertones but still sell products using sexuality. Even celebrity endorsements by conventionally ‘attractive’ people use sexuality to sell.
Regarding things that contain sexual content and presumably sell because they do — let’s talk about the most relevant form of content to this course; erotic novels.
One of the most recent and famous erotic novels — that first came to mind was, of course, Fifty Shades of Grey. Sadly not the finest work of fiction. Yet it managed to sell 125 million copies within a year of being published. Altogether, all three books have en-massed over 90 million dollars in sales. Now, of course, all three books have accompanying films, and the books themselves can be found in just about every charity shop, right there alongside the Twilight series, ironically the books said to have inspired the fifty shades series.
Now I haven’t read fifty shades personally, besides the extract we had to analyse in a seminar once on account that it is so poorly written, but I know that just about all of my friends mum’s have. I can bet that they didn’t read it for the writing or even the story but merely because of the sex, which from what I’ve heard, isn’t even well written enough to be considered good.
So let’s assume that this entire series’ success was just down to the fact that the books contained sex and were marketed as so. Because I’ve read plenty of books that contain sex, but I didn’t pick it up knowing that or because it did.
So why does sexual content sell?
I could go all Freudian with this one, talk about the id and the unconscious desires. Talk about how our underlying nature is to procreate, so we are naturally drawn to anything that encourages that behaviour. It is essential of course for our species to live on. But what about gay people? These people can’t procreate yet still feel sexual attraction. What about asexual people who don’t feel sexual attraction at all?. Are they still affected by ‘sex sells?’ For the most part, yes.
The reason ‘sex sells’ is the same reason sexy adverts sell. Advertisers are selling the fantasy, the same way media with explicit sexual content sell the fantasy. Real life is messy and complicated — fiction and advertising aren’t. It’s the best possible scenario. People see a sexy advert and want to feel the way the person shown does, perfume adverts are probably the best example for this. They can’t show you what the scent smells like so they have to show you what you would hypothetically feel like or look like or things that will happen to you when you wear it. The fantasy. The same way media with sexual content can allow people to live out their fantasies through characters.
However, while living out fantasies has its positives in terms of escapism, it can also be very harmful. The unrealistic and ideal situations shown in erotica and pornography can have real-life effects on individuals and their relationships. Indulging too much in fantasy can affect individuals mental health, self-esteem and ability to maintain healthy sex lives.
Despite having to follow advertising standards, the people in the ‘sexy’ adverts are still photo-shopped and airbrushed to unrealistic standards. Not even the most beautiful people look like the people in the adverts in real life. Again, more unrealistic expectations. The adverts tell you if you buy their products that you too, can be breathtakingly beautiful. But people aren’t naive, they know that buying that perfume, cologne, jewellery, clothes etc isn’t going to suddenly Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo them into a model. Yet it still works. Like something inside us tells us if we buy this product we will at least be on the way to becoming the people we want to be or achieving the life we want to live. It’s unhealthy to believe that a product will bring your fantasies into fruition, but it works. If it didn’t the advertisers wouldn’t still be using sexuality and fantasy to make sales.
So… back to Fifty Shades of Grey. Fifty Shades contains many elements of an abusive relationship, pointed out by members of the BDSM community, things such as possessiveness, manipulation and ignoring safe words. So when people buy into Fifty Shades of Grey, people are essentially buying into fantasising about an unhealthy relationship.
Despite the unhealthy side effects advertisers still continue to use sex to sell their products, because at the end of the day, it works and they want to make money. It’s a simple as that.
