Post 3 - Sexualized Advertising

The concept of “sex sells” has been a popular theme in advertising since the early 1900s. At first, most would think that it means slapping a pretty woman on the cover of whatever you’re trying to sell. That’s far too simple to be effective, especially since doing so in such a lackadaisical way would give women and their bodies far too much power. Jean Kilbourne goes in depth with this, describing five ways women can be the only subject in an image but still be an object. How a woman is framed, in her posture, in contrast to a man, can include a women but still pose her as vulnerable and weak. That practice and the practice of dismembering or separating a woman’s body into parts to be the object of desire, are both active in this image with a dash of implied violence and female subordinance. Meanwhile, below are two more ads that are more subliminal in their approach, respectively showing superiority and clowning. Superiority meaning despite having a neutral and active pose, the female model is still not in control, as she is being held (buttocks first, mind you) by the male model. In the Versace image, even though the subjects are two women, they are posed and engaging in outlandish and cartoonish positions as opposed to the serious or demure figures they are in other scenes. Here they are as Kilbourne states "pictured as playful clowns" not meant to be taken seriously. The common theme of nudity is just the icing on the cake of almost all of these images, as the woman is scantily clad in all of these, normally wearing only what they're advertising.

L.V. ad demonstrating dismembering and
passive posing.

Over the time I spent researching for this I learned that the only thing worse than viewing ads is finding out why; a bit of the “knowing-how-sausage-is-made” dilemma. YouTube of course, is probably the worst; a website that is infamous for housing objectively problematic, inciteful, and dangerous content creators, at best for far too long. As an extension of Google which relentless mines all of my habits and search results, clicks and web traffic, I used to think there was something faulty with their ad targetting considering a young, black, left-leaning, broke liberal college student was being bombarded with PragerU propaganda and CRTV ads. I’m clearly not against my own interests, clearly have faith the college education system, and clearly don’t have money to spend every month to buy a subscription in order to watch some rich white guys tell me why it’s their god given rights to dictate mine.

C.K. and Versace ads conveniently combined into one
image, displaying clowning and superiority concepts

Apparently the ad formula was to show me controversial content from something I clearly expressed disinterest in (AKA: that one Steven Crowder clip I disliked and stopped watching five seconds in). Why? Because it’s more effective to not have me watch a fifteen second Lysol ad I’d forget about in fifteen seconds but instead watch five seconds of an ad for content I despise and have me spend minutes trying to find ways to avoid seeing it. It’s inciteful. It got me riled up. It was on my mind for a lot longer than it should be and now, I’m sitting here, spreading the word of how much I hate alt-right think tanks and echo chambers. It’s free publicity.

Facebook has done the same thing as well. While having counter-content thrown in your face sounds like a healthy way to be forced to see other viewpoints, it’s absolutely wild to see ads calling college professors “domestic terrorists… seeking to undermine American society” being proudly displayed like any other piece of advertising despite how dangerous and misinformed they are. Even Tumblr proved that having enough money could cause someone to completely flip their values after a huge wave of Republican Committee ad bombarded the site’s overwhelmingly and totally conservative and pro-Trump base (for reference Tumblr is almost entirely left, and/or queer). This hasn’t even begun to show how baseless and malicious political ads can be since I haven’t even mentioned the slew election ads featured on television and radio, some not even for a candidate, just trying to ensure you don’t vote an entire party. The media today, especially in terms of politics, is just trying to feed you content meant to enrage and confuse you. I’ve been sick of it for months now, and I can’t imagine what kind of messages women of multiple marginalized groups are facing.