Preview

Interpreting The Use Of Sex In Advertising

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
662 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Interpreting The Use Of Sex In Advertising
Sex In Advertisements
Does sex sell? Is it necessary to include sexual images in an advertisement when trying to sell a product? The answer is contingent upon which audience you are targeting and what product you are trying to sell. By linking these sexual images to a product, the reaction to purchase the product is based upon a false desire; these desires are created by physical instincts. Often times sex appeal is used as a marketing strategy to appeal to certain target audiences. There are different ways of using sex to sell in an advertisement, all of which generally appeal to the senses of the audience. Although some perceptions of these advertisements are negative, the use of sex results in a more interesting, appealing ad, ultimately
…show more content…
Nudity is known as a revealing display of the body; this can vary from tight-fitting clothing, to underwear and lingerie, to being fully naked. Once a consumer views an advertisement containing nudity, the physical features of the people in the ad are most commonly remembered. Because the attention received towards an ad containing nudity usually generates a desire to purchase that product, companies lean towards creating more advertisements with nudity. Using nudity as one type of sexual display generally increases the sales outcome for most advertisements; the major dependent is on which group of people are being targeted. According to Latour and Henthorne in "Nudity and Sex Appeals", high levels of nudity for a men's magazine proved effective when trying to increase sales. On the other hand, high levels of nudity for a woman's magazine actually plumitted the sales of that magazine. When using sex to sell a product, it all depends on the target audience (Reichert & Lambiase, …show more content…
Nudity is known as a revealing display of the body; this can vary from tight-fitting clothing, to underwear and lingerie, to being fully naked. Once a consumer views an advertisement containing nudity, the physical features of the people in the ad are most commonly remembered. Because the attention received towards an ad containing nudity usually generates a desire to purchase that product, companies lean towards creating more advertisements with nudity. Using nudity as one type of sexual display generally increases the sales outcome for most advertisements; the major dependent is on which group of people are being targeted. According to Latour and Henthorne in "Nudity and Sex Appeals", high levels of nudity for a men's magazine proved effective when trying to increase sales. On the other hand, high levels of nudity for a woman's magazine actually plumitted the sales of that magazine. When using sex to sell a product, it all depends on the target audience (Reichert & Lambiase,

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    American Apparel has built a fast growing empire on some of the most risqué, porn-influenced ads ever seen in mainstream media. Usage of the porn-influenced ads are in hopes of saving the company from financial troubles. Everyone knows that American Apparel ads are sexy. They usually feature coy, semi-dressed women lounging on a bed or sofa. Although this is a good way to catch the eye of consumers, they also lead to many problems with too much nudity exposure, which becomes may offensive to some of the public. American Apparel’s usage of high sex appeal will generally attract attention from the public, and the more attention towards the brand the more likely the brand will sell.…

    • 781 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Call it hunkvertising. The objectification of men in advertising (as with women) is not new. Consider icons like the Marlboro Man and Old Spice’s sexy pitchman Isaiah Mustafa. And yet, a disproportionate number of buff, often-shirtless studs are lately popping up in ads for everything from salad dressing to air fresher-in other words, consumer products not normally associated with sexual imagery. As ever, sex sells-even the hirsute sex,…

    • 1157 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A sexual image is a US that triggers a UR of interest or arousal. Before the advertisement pairs a product with a sexual image, the product is an NS. Over time the product can become a CS that triggers the CR of interest or arousal.…

    • 843 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In our competitive world of business and products, the sale is the highest goal for the companies and the most effective so far tool to raise it is throughout the advertisement. The sellers are willing to pay a big money for a short message that will be watched by the potential viewers. The industry consider an add as effective when brings to the sale of the product. Nevertheless, in the world where the potential financial resources of viewers are limited, the immediate sale of the product will only occur if a specific add win over tens or hundreds of others watched at the same day by the same viewer. Therefore, the advertisement must be original and appealing to be able to persuade the viewers to buying the product. Another problem for advertisement is the limited memory of the viewers. For that reason, the marketing people concentrate on creating images that will not be easily forgotten. If the add drew the attention of the viewer there is a big chance the product for gaining a prospective buyer. The easiest way to do that of is to link the product with the ideas that all people are familiar or the opposite: the ideas that will shock the viewers. Therefore, the sex and attributes of gender as well as violence are so widely used in a modern world of advertisement. The advertisement researchers know that neutral scenes do not stay in our memory as long as violence and sex scenes.…

    • 720 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The picture on page 398 is a great example of sex and advertising. The woman…

    • 534 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The increasingly popular obscenities and nudity are infinitely related to the theory of sex sells. It is used to arouse the interest in a particular product, service or brand. The thought process that we follow our primal urges of food and reproduction has been used in advertising for a long time. However, there is also a fine line that can be stepped over and people can be turned off.…

    • 391 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    It's a fact: Sex does indeed sell. It's not a mystery anymore, the secret is no longer. For instance, if a mother with teenage daughters was working for an advertisement company, and her boss told her to go advertise that the company needed high school girls to model their product, that being provocative clothing that promoted sex. The money/salary the mother makes, drives her ambition to sell the product. However, her boss wants her to go promote the product at a high school. The mother feels like she has an obligation to her fellow mothers in her community whose daughters might be promoting the…

    • 1313 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Advertisements these days rely more on content which contains nudity, since this could mean more attention to the products therefore more recognition and sales (LaTour,Pitts & Snook-Luther ,1990). The phenomenon of public nudity in advertisement has been gradually increasing and eventually the society is becoming more accepting to this matter .in August 1991Vanity Fair featured a cover of actress Demi Moore where she was pregnant and nude, this caused a controversy when some distributers sold the magazine with a brown paper banner on it while other distributers just refused to even resell it. People reacted to this magazine cover, some saying it is “repulsive” and some said “ it is artistic” (Eck,2001). In 2005, Beetles and Harris conducted a research to study attitudes…

    • 1819 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sexual behaviors are portrayed in many ways in the media and through advertising. For example, almost every ad in a magazine for jeans or pants has a half-naked people in the photograph. Commercials for beauty products usually include naked woman. Other clothing commercials sometimes show a two people kissing and take clothes off alluding to the fact that they will end up having sex. Its not that having sex is wrong or anything like that, yet, it makes it…

    • 686 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Bordo Essa

    • 1665 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Over the past decade or so the idea and image of sex has become so common place that to see half naked men and women across all types of media from billboards and ads to commercials is no longer a taboo, rather it is the key to marketing. This isn’t always tasteful advertising either most of the time there is very little left to the imagination and you have to stop and wonder what is the point? Where do we draw the line between what is erotic enough to attract attention and where we begin to cross into more adult themed messages? These images however, are meant to create an impression to condition us into thinking that what we see in these ads is what the ideal man or women should look like. In the daily beast article I found online we examine the difference between some of the people who are these flawless beauties yet multiple details of their “flawless” bodies are touched up and photo shopped in very subtle ways. What type of message is the media sending if the images that are supposed to represent perfection aren’t perfect enough?…

    • 1665 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    A wide variety of advertisements have been creating numerous images of men and women for years now regarding gender roles and sex diversity. The advertising industry in particular has formed the impression that “sex sells,” now using women’s bodies as sex objects (Ford, 2008). Previous research has shown men are being outnumbered when it comes to women being sexualized. More importantly, the advertising industry has shown what the “accurate” gender roles for men and women are to be. Men are to be dominant, tough, strong, independent, and detached. Contrastingly, women are to be dependent, loving mothers and wives, concerned with beauty, and emotional. This literature review will look at the ways magazine advertisements portray objects and figures,…

    • 146 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In a circa 2009 (date not specified) online advertisement, Pamela Anderson’s sexy, sculpted, half-naked self is plastered across the page. An all-white background sets the focus on this image and the text. As if this doesn’t grab the attention of a consumer in the first place, Pamela’s body is marked up in all of the same places that cattle, pig, chicken, and the like would be marked before they are sliced up, grinded, processed, genetically modified, processed again, packaged, and sold to the public. The purpose there is to expose the similarities between humans and animals, and make the consumer think. Advertisements have a way of creating emotion in the viewer. According to PeTA’s website, nudity is used in some of their advertisements to emphasize the idea of “I would rather be naked than wear fur,” an effective advertising strategy that they’ve used on multiple ads. A…

    • 902 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sex In Advertising Essay

    • 993 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The Skyy Ad described above for example portrays women as simply being housewife’s, according to several stereotypes housewife’s just lounge around doing nothing. That’s exactly what is shown on the ad the woman is just lying on the sand sunbathing. Not only are they being labeled housewife but they are also being illustrated as objects to look at in a seductive manner. I agree with Jean Kilbourne when she says “Sex in advertising is pornographic because it dehumanizes and objectifies people, especially women, and because it fetishizes products, imbues them with an erotic charge- which dooms us to disappointment since products never can fulfill our sexual desires or meet our emotional needs.” Especially because companies are using women to false advertise sex, claiming that by using their product they will get to have sex with attractive girls seen on the ad or females might even take it as discouraging and lose confidence in themselves, because they now feel the pressure to compete with the beauty of a supermodel on an…

    • 993 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sexual objectification occurs in most ads today. Many ads focus on attractive people and how their body can lure viewers in to buy their product, advertisers use this person’s body as an attractive object rather than a person to be respected, for example women are objectified in ads by being taken advantage of, as well as being represented as a product not a person. Many ads feature women covering parts of their body or for instance laying on a couch with sexual slurs surrounding them. Companies are trying to attract men to their product by sexually pleasing them, thus dehumanizing women and degrading them. By broadcasting them nude in many different ways. De humanization is represented in the “sex sells” ad by telling us that some women sell their body for sex, thus dehumanizing women and giving some a stereotype of being easy and it being socially accepted to do…

    • 990 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Spanish

    • 472 Words
    • 2 Pages

    As a bilingual speaker, Rodriguez wrote Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood to disapprove “bilingual education.” Narrating about his childhood living as a bilingual child in the states, he claims his points. For the successful deliverance of his message, he uses several writing styles—metaphor, parenthesis, and anaphora—throughout his essay.…

    • 472 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays