Sex Sells
Oh, there is a cheeseburger in that picture. Looking at it, all I was thinking was perhaps I should get some stockings, my teeth are too yellow, I need some lingerie, and do I want a boob job? Interestingly, they have used a skinny girl to promote what you will not become if the viewer allows the advert to fulfil its intended purpose.
Sexualised adds have been used since 1871 when a semi naked lady was used to sell tobacco;
Of course, this add makes perfect sense; perhaps they were trying to encourage ladies to start smoking through their vaginas? Or use their boobs as a cigarette holder? And obviously they needed all that water to put out the cigarette when finished so no fire was started, safety first. It is interesting that until recently, it has been mainly men who were targeted when it comes to sexual imagery; like raunchiness is a direct button to their wallets. Since 1871 goodness knows how many lazy advertisers have made a quick buck through a sexy advert. It is not just advertising, many media outlets have jumped on the raunchy band wagon. The music, fashion, and magazine industry (to name a few) are rife. On the surface it looks harmless. Oh, sex sells, but what is it actually selling?
The term sex sells is not quite a literal one. According to the Oxford Learner dictionary Sex appeal refers to being attractive in a sexual way. (Oxford 2020) The media is all around us. On billboards, in shops, on the radio and TV and now in our very hands through the screen of our phones. It has become inescapable. These sexualised images are all over the place. Beautiful, airbrushed, skinny women and impossibly muscly men. A picture of the modern successful person. If we are to be acceptable and valuable to society then we must fit into its mould of what we ‘should’ look like right? And let’s face it, were reminded of what that should look like on a minutely basis. There is a conveyor belt of pictures of perfect flawless people there to constantly remind us of what we do not look like.
It is difficult enough for an adult to rise above the pressure of perceived perfection, but what about our young people? What happens, I wonder, in the mind of the little girl who is sees, daily, images of beautiful scantily clad women? And hears on the radio things like: “Let’s have some fun, this beat is sick, I wana take a ride on your disco stick” (Gaga 2008) and “Came on rude boy, boy can you get it up?” (Rhiannah 2009) and “let me sex you baby” (Brown, 2009) and she reads things like:
‘smitten creative director, Justin Hooper, told fox news: Kate’s probably the hottest girl we’ve ever worked with.’ (Mail online, 2012)
As she absorbs all this information the cogs in her mind start to turn and her outlook begins to take shaped. As she grows into a teenager, she follows the advice of the media; that to be valuable she needs to be sexy. She has heard it on the radio, she has watched it on TV. It has been confirmed by her peers who are equally brain washed. She knows what she needs to do. As she begins to shorten her skirt and paint her face, she starts to get attention. She looks sexually attractive and begins to get close with the opposite sex. She begins sexual relationships at alarmingly young age, according to NHS Scotland between a third and a half of under sixteens have had sex (Sexual activity and the under sixteens, 2020) she becomes pregnant and yet, she is a child. What was just a bit of fun has just become very real, very quickly. There is a choice here. She will either stay with the father or more often than not she is left alone. Single parent families make up nearly a quarter of families in the UK (Gingerbread, 2020) she is now forced into poverty. You can not work and raise a child, or if you find a way then the child is now somehow doing life with out its mother. That child is now at a disadvantage, in a study by the BBC it was discovered that children whose parents had divorced were more likely to fail to progress at school. (BBC, 2019)
After following the advice of the media, this girl, still very young, looks up at the billboard of Rihanna or whoever may occupy the position of role model of the year, and wonders where she went wrong.
What about the young men? Everywhere he looks the medial is telling him that a woman is nothing but a sexual object. She should look and behave a certain way. And he goes out into the world with this poisonous mindset, and he tells the impressionable young girl that she is not good enough because she is not skinny and because she will not have sex with him. And she believes now that she is not good enough so she goes on a diet and starves herself half to death so she can fit into that oh so thin mould. Mental health found that in 2019 19% of adults felt disgusted with their bodies. A quarter of these were between the ages of 13 and 19. They also state that being exposed to images of idealised or unrealistic bodies can affect body image. (mentalhealth 2019)
So, what is sex selling? It sells poison, poison which seeps into the subconscious of the viewer like a poison gas. It sells destruction and insecurity and perfectionism. If the family unit is the building block of society then this idea within the media is a cancer eating into it. Destroying it one cell at a time.
Bibliography
Body Image Report (2020) Available at: https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/publications/body-image-report/exec-summary Accessed 10/11/2020)
Do Children In Two Parent Families Do Better? (2019) Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-47057787 Accessed 10/11/2020)
Mail Online (2012) Available at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2108436/Kate-Upton-strips-devours-spicy-burger-extended-Carls-Jr-commercial.html (Accessed 10/11/2020)
Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries (2020) Available at: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/sex-appeal (Accessed: 10/11/2020)
Sex in advertising (2020) Available at: https://mbenisz.wordpress.com/history-of-sex-in-advertising/ (Accessed: 9/11/2020)
Sexual activity and under sixteens (2020) Available at: https://www.nhsborders.scot.nhs.uk/patients-and-visitors/our-services/general-services/underage-sexual-activity-interagency-guidance/sexual-activity-and-the-under-sixteens/ (Accessed 10/11/2020)
Single Parents Today (2019) Available at: https://www.gingerbread.org.uk/what-we-do/media-centre/single-parents-facts figures/#:~:text=In%20the%20UK%3A,single%20parents%20are%20women%20(iii) (Accessed 10/11/2020)
So Feminine (2014) Available at: https://www.sofeminine.co.uk/news-celebrities/the-12-most-sexist-and-offensive-lyrics-by-artists-you-love-s1118267.html (Accessed 10/11/2020) y
