Sex Isn't Selling

 We as a society have heard, “sex sells” so much that we have taken it as an indisputable fact, and during this time of the peak of shopping, I think it is important that we unpack that phrase. Advertisements have been objectifying women based in this notion that their sexuality sells for decades.

Ads from the 50s used the submissive woman stereotype in order to promote products because it portrayed “women as existing to service the man.” (1). Women’s role was exclusively domestic, so in these ads a woman was often seen cooking or cleaning in the household for the man. A woman’s role was to complete the household tasks and physically be present for the man, and this notion appealed to the men at the time. These are some examples of ads during the time that now come across to general society as extremely sexist, and yet we still have the same issue of women being misused in order to sell products.

The 2000s found an innovative way to continue to use women’s bodies to sell products without necessarily saying that a woman’s role is to please a man directly. The new wave of advertisements sought to associate sexual pleasure and material products, so it had more explicitly dressed women around foods or cars that companies were selling. There is no practical reason for a woman in lingerie to be washing a car, but company logic said that now the men seeing these ads associate sexual women with these objects and thus want the object.

These kinds of advertisements were effective- for a while. When women did not hold as many jobs as men, when the pay gap was more dramatic than today, when they did not hold powerful positions, and when they largely did not have as much empowerment as they do today, it was a lot easier for these advertisement companies to get away with releasing sexist, objectified, sexualized ads without much scrutiny, but today women are more empowered, have more of a voice in how they are portrayed, hold more positions within advertising, and hold more consumer power. In addition, the narratives about the female struggle and the need for women’s rights have grown, causing more and more men to devalue this kind of objectification of women because they are increasingly aware that women are autonomous human beings rather than simply the sex that can sell.

Because of this, sex is no longer selling. The study, “Does Sex Really Sell? Paradoxical Effects of Sexualization in Advertising on Product Attractiveness and Purchase Intentions” was made to determine if sexualized ads actually work. The researchers tested sexualized and neutral ads of both men and women on both men and women to see if the sexualized ad made people more likely to purchase a product. The findings were that women were less likely to purchase the products in the sexualized woman ads than the neutral product and were indifferent to the sexualized men ads, and that men were less likely to purchase from a sexualized male ad and generally equally likely to purchase a product from either the neutral or sexualized women ads, unless they had hostile attitudes towards women.

The results from the women’s side shows us two major issues within the era of sexualized ads. The first is that it increases body image issues for women, because often the sexualized women in the ads are thin, white women, and this is a dangerous road to lead women onto. The second is that it upsets women seeing their own kind being degraded to simply a means of selling objects, and turns them off from even purchasing that product. The results from the men’s side also shows us a few issues within society. One of the most glaring issues is that these sexualized ads almost exclusively appeal to sexist men, which means advertising companies are catering to sexism directly. This leads these already sexist men to reinforce their notions of women being objects and that the role of a woman is to please a man, and this is extremely dangerous to women because these men may go out and actually behave violently towards women because ultimately the way these images of women are being fed to them are not portraying women as their own autonomous, individual, powerful people, but rather as sexual objects made for the pleasure of a man.

These advertisements are not actually effective in terms of sex selling; products are not starting to fly off shelves because a company portrayed a women with the product sexually, but they do continue to have harmful effects on women. These advertisements increase, “the endorsement of gender inequality norms, tolerance toward sexual harassment, and rape myth acceptance.” (2). They continue to increase violent behaviors toward women and have negative psychological effects on women, and yet the ads continue to persevere.

If sex is no longer really selling, there is not even a financial reason for companies to continue creating these advertisements, not to mention that these advertisements are just dangerous, and always have been. We need to give women a voice within the advertisement industry to ensure that the industry does better by women, and we need to listen to all the people that this is harming. It is time we stopped creating these harmful images when promoting products.

Sources:

http://thedailycougar.com/2018/04/03/women-hypersexualized-ads/

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224499.2016.1142496?scroll=top&needAccess=true

https://qz.com/1910426/sex-doesnt-sell-so-why-do-ads-keep-objectifying-women/

https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0033-2909.134.3.460

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-020-01190-6

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1xGF5MusCk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DISmB6hksBI

https://www.businessinsider.com/recreated-ads-from-1950s-gender-roles-reversed-2018-1

https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/03/08/budweiser-remakes-its-ads-the-50s-with-seeher-international-women-s-day