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Contact this writerThe Naked Truth
A young girl is being harassed by a guy on a motorcycle. A shipwrecked man is trying to trade bananas for sex. Another young girl is in the woods surrounded by shiny diamonds, wearing a skimpy dress revealing almost everything, from legs to breast. The list goes on and on by what seems to be a scene from a movie, scenes that have been used too often, it's hard to believe that this time you won't see it in the following feature attractions at a theater near you. Sounds like an advertisement? Maybe because you can see it from Harper's Bazaar magazine showcasing collections from eluxury.com and diamond.com (35, 94,95).
The vast majority of pictures in the magazine are so alarmingly real that it makes me wonder how far the advertisement world is willing to go just to sell their products. Kilbourne, in her essay "Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt," says sex in advertising degrades people, especially women to the point where it becomes pornographic. She adds that pornography violates women on their innocence, beauty, and sexuality (456).
True, the magazine is meant to entertain women in their thirties, but the fact is, the magazine can be freely accessible to children as well. A child can easily flip through the magazine and see a woman on page 56, completely naked, except for the silver heels and diamond jewelry that make up her ensemble. The woman is lying down in an awkward position, one hand covering one breast, and looks entirely pale except for her provocative hooker make-up.
Why is the woman bare? Because the naked truth is: Advertisements use sex to sell their products degrading women in the process.
It is sad to realize that a lot of us patronize these advertisements and don't even know it. We blindly browse though these fashion magazines without consciously knowing what's really in front of us. Sure, the woman on page 56 is naked, but do we really acknowledge the fact that she is literally lying there butt naked and completely vulnerable? The advertisers used her as a thing bonded by an agreement on a piece of paper, a contract that spells out her limitations and clause, and the advertiser's right to use her photograph at any extent. As long as she gets paid, she becomes property and they can do anything to her photographed nakedness. Kilbourne says turning a person into a thing is almost like justifying violence against that person (463). And that if the person becomes an object, violence is inevitable (464).
So what happens when a simple photograph becomes an object of exploitation? A person gets violated, degraded, and morally frowned upon. It is so easy to say that a certain ad is an "art" expressed through a naked woman, but justifying a reason for exploitation is another thing. You can't just say she did it for the sake of art when another person mocks it.
My sister even asked me what the ad is selling, because the perfume is not even in the picture. Her first thought is that they're selling diamonds because the girl is dressed luxuriously. But it's just a picture of a naked girl posing for people to glorify her body and all of its bareness. The absence of the product makes you raise a brow and wonder if they're selling a specific thing or if that certain object is the naked girl. If the real answer is the latter, then the subject is obviously pornography. It is an intrusion to womanhood and an obvious violation of the signed contract that should protect her against mistreatment. The sad part though is that there is an unremarkable caption that disguises the ad as valid "art," a pornography hiding in words: "Opium, the fragrance from Yves Saint Laurent" (Harper's Bazaar, 56).
A perfume! Who would have guessed? Obviously, you don't need to guess if you read their 20 pt. orange colored font that conveniently blends with the background. It spells out what they are trying to sell.
But what about that six-year old girl who is curiously flipping through the magazine's pages? Surely, she can't read! What will you tell her when she asks you why there's a "dead naked lady" in the magazine? Or why little red riding hood on page 94 is scared of the ugly man on a motorcycle? Do you have the heart to tell her the truth - that it's just a commercial for clothing and perfume, that people actually strip naked for a living, that the naked lady is not dead, but merely pale and the ugly man is not hurting little red riding hood, just admiring her clothes? Will a six-year old find humor in sexual aggression? Will she understand that it's not to be taken seriously? Not literally? That it's just a picture and no one really died or got hurt? Because if no one got hurt and apparently, no one died, then how come there are millions of battered women all over the world? Without providing the obvious, Kilbourne claims that there's a woman somewhere who gets beat up by her friend, boyfriend, or even worse - her husband, everyday! (463).
The mere fact that men are stronger and more aggressive than women is beside the point when it comes to the iron-clad fist of domestic violence. These women actually died in the hands of the people they trust and love.
We all remember the Lacy Peterson murder trial/investigation that concluded in the conviction of her husband, Scott Peterson. To think that the media was all over the case, and yet what did America learn from all this drama? I want to say that a lesson was learned, because there has to be for the sake of Lacy and her unborn child. But then I remember watching the news after the trial was concluded and Scott was put in jail. There were several women who put up a sign with "Marry me Scott!" written all over it. Are they for real? Do they really want to marry a guy who killed his wife and murdered his own kid? Are there really women out there who find a murderer attractive, and are they superficial enough to marry him? Is the allure of sex and aggression so powerful that killing two human beings entirely out of the question? What are these women thinking?
Maybe they're not even thinking at all. Maybe the destructive effect of media and the effect of violent portrayal in advertisement cloud their judgment and clarity of thinking. Or maybe they just become so numb that they don't feel anymore. After all, too much of something can make a person insensitive; they won't even know what hit them. Even if that thing is right in front, people become so blind that if it were a snake they won't see it about to attack.
Sex in advertising is a lot like snake. Its poisonous venom lures those who are weak, into its fangs. And once you get bitten, you either die or become disillusioned, either way you're lifeless.
But there is a cure, as all of us get trapped into the web of media, not just in magazine ads, but also advertisement in television. "From birth to age twenty-one, an average person in the U.S. sees at least a quarter million ads on television" (Fridell 1). That's a lot of commercials in one lifetime! A lot of influence in one box! And that same influence can possibly shape a child's future.
So why no start with the simple task: when you become a parent, be a friend as well. Guide the kids in your life; your little sister or brother, niece or nephew, even younger cousins and little neighbors. Patiently explain to them the reasons and purpose of media, how constructive it can be and how it helps us in our everyday decisions when it comes to our choices; be it a product, a sport, or a television program. Tell them of the destructive effect it can have if they emulate a thing that mirrors violence, sex, and aggression. Explain to them why some people, particularly women, are being used as an object to sell a product. Try it! Get in touch with your inner child that you once lost along the way of becoming a grown up.
By doing so, you not only helped future generations of America, but also healed yourself in the process. I believe that no matter how deeply you have been cut, or how much an open wound stings, a child's smile can cure any troubles the society will throw your way. Fridell says when these children finish high school, they would have spent more than 15 thousand hours of watching TV, and would have only spent 11 thousand hours in school (1). So shelter them but don't mock their innocence. Let them learn, and grow, and interact. Engage them into sports and provide a positive environment. After all, you don't want to see these children twenty years form now posing like the girl on page 56. A scary thought, but it could happen, especially if the advertisement in 2027 hasn't changed a bit. The good news though is that there's still time and you can still change!
Works Cited
Betts, Katherin. Harper's Bazaar. December 2000. 35, 56, 94, 95.
Fridell, Squire. Acting in Television Commercials for Fun and Profit. New York:Three Rivers Press, 1986
Kilbourne, Jean. "Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt." Rereading America. 6th edition
Ed. Gary Colombo, Robert Cullen, Bonnie Lisle. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004. 456, 463, 464.
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Do ads that use sex to sell their products degrade women?Add your voice
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Using sex to sell products is a well-worn technique for improving a given product's sales. To quote the oft-cited advertising maxim: "sex sells!". It is clear from the average magazine on showbiz gossip, a prime-time television ad break, or from an array of billboard posters that scantily clad armies of attractive women are used to portray more than the mere informational content of the product. Indeed, despite increasing sophistication in the advertising industry, it is surprising (and possibly saddening) that sex is still one of the main factors that serve as a primary enhancement tool in the generation of strong brands. The question is, therefore, not about whether adverts use sex, but about whether women in particular are degraded to a greater or lesser degree than men.
One of the arguments in favor of women being exploited is that models are degraded because they are objectified. This degradation of the woman's original goodness by advertisers is exploited in a pornographic way that debases the model involved. There are two recourses against this type of argumentation. Firstly, to suggest that all models are exploited generalizes and objectifies models in the same way as the adverts tend to do; models are seen as a convenient victim of evil marketeers (usually male) whose flesh is corrupted by an insidious male gaze. However, what this does is it compartmentalizes all models as dumb victims. As such, the argument is itinerant to the whole objectification process. Secondly, if models do not have a choice, step into advertising and are exploited by it, then why is advertising in particular to blame for the degradation of women? Surely society should be the focus instead. Indeed, advertising, in this case, merely offers female models opportunities in the absence of an escape-route into nobler, more dignified professions.
A counter-argument suggests that men are exploited to a greater degree than women because they are the main people who are targeted by the ad. A recent survey in Adweek (October 17, 2005) suggests that different genders operate very differently regarding advertisements with sexual content. While 48% of men like ads with sexual content, only 8% of women do. Similarly, 63% of men say that ads with sexual themes make them look while only 28% of women say they react in the same way (p. 17). As such, it is clear that men are targeted directly by these advertisements and that, when it comes to the bottom line, men are being exploited for their proclivity toward parting with money when shown a picture of a beautiful woman. However, is this really true? Is either gender degraded to a greater degree than the former in sexual advertising?
What is particularly interesting is that advertisements with sexual content are designed to appeal to women as well as men. The advertisements stuffed into women's magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Elle frequently display women rather than men as a means to sell products. As such, it can be concluded that sex is used to sell to women as well as men. Therefore, the previous argument falters on grounds that men should be the only people opening their wallets. The question however, is considerably more complex.
Advertising is a recursive medium that takes into account the consumer's resilience to advertising methods. As such, advertising becomes increasingly complex, convoluted and ironical as consumers become less naive about the tricks used to sell products. The surface level of advertising, say, a half-naked model becomes interlaced with how half-naked models have been interpreted, interpolated and discarded by cynical consumers in the past, what the target demographic is, and how the general advertising climate is operating to generate broader trends. For example, an argument in favor of the question is the increasing prevalence of using (and therefore promoting) models whose features are exaggeratedly thin and unhealthy. While almost nobody approves of the promotion of skeletally thin models over more appropriately proportioned women, the consistent use of models across the industry generates a uniform concept of beauty which degrades women by making more natural attributes appear grotesque by comparison. However, by buying into this notion of beauty, women themselves are complicit in their own degradation. Similarly, men are equally exploited by generalizations based on gender, and often buy into the concept that they are, for example, singularly obsessed by sex, are imbecilic, docile and terminally confused by this warped view of femininity, laced with levels of irony and self-reflexivity. While less overt than the use of naked women, the effect is markedly similar: advertising exploits and broadens the commincation gap between various demographics which leads to the atomization of the individual. The recursive effects of what Jean Baudrillard calls the "information blizzard" creates a reality in which everybody is exploited to more or less the same degree.
While the original question is true, I argue that it does not go far enough in describing the complex and ironic machinations of the advertising industry. First and foremost, advertising is concerned about selling a product and promoting a strong brand image. The degradation of women in advertising is incidental to its primary aim of making money, and to suggest that purely women are exploited does not make logical sense. Of course, advertising promotes a certain female object of desire; but it also creates a swathe of consumers (male and female) who are equally entrained by the prevailing ethos of advertising to part with their cash. The object of degradation is therefore the consumer him or herself, whose needs and desires are exploited by an all-pervading atmosphere of complex consumption.
Top "No" articles on:
Do ads that use sex to sell their products degrade women?-
1 of 64
by Paul Stanway
Using sex to sell products is a well-worn technique for improving a given product's sales. To quote the oft-cited ad...read more
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2 of 64
by Stan Dyer
Yes, advertisements use sex to sell their products, but they do not degrade women. Instead, they degrade the people ...read more
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