Sex in Adertising

Advertising can be defined as any paid form of non-personal promotion transmitted through mass medium. People all over the world are bombarded with advertisement messages, whether it be in print, television, radio, flyers, poster, or billboards. It seems that in today’s society, every company has the idea that “sex sells”. Unfortunately this holds true. Sex does sell. All types of media are flooded with some kind of either blatant or subliminal sexual image or message. Advertisers use this as a means to sell their products. One of their main strategies is using women as sex objects. Sex has always been considered to be a forbidden fruit, yet somehow it contains an instinctual power over society that draws us to it (Caride, 2009). One thing that companies fail to realize is how this affects their audience. Children are being exposed to sexy advertisements at a very young age. Sexual behavior can be seen in body postures, gestures, types of clothing, hairstyles, makeup, and tone of voice of the models in the ads. Most advertisements nowadays try to feature the least amount of clothing as possible. The models in the ads will always be seen with a perfect body, either muscular or toned. This presents an unrealistic image of what a “normal” woman or man are supposed to look like (Caride, 2009). Children are very impressionable and through these ads are taught that this is the norm in society.

A growing concern in our society is the plight of female adolescents and young women. They face many obstacles in life. One of them is having to be physically attractive. Young girls are typically preoccupied with being attempting to become beautiful. Advertising has been accused of unintentionally imposing a “sense of inadequacy” on women’s self concepts (Martin & Gentry, 1997). The purpose of this paper is to explore whether or not the sexual connotation of today’s advertisements has a direct or indirect affect on the way that adolescent girls and young women view their...