Do ads that use sex to sell their products degrade women?
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.
