How sex in advertising has negative effects on societies perception of beauty - Term Paper Example

How sex in advertising has negative effects on society’s perception of beauty? It is practically inescapable to turn on the television, browse internet, page through a magazine, or drive past billboards without seeing some sort of sex appeal. Sex appeal is the “use of sexual themes that appeal to a person’s desire to be attractive,” according to the article “Advertising” in the 1999 World Book encyclopedia (Robertson, p.1) Since advertising is a big business, advertisers may not keep any ethics or morality while producing or displaying advertisements in either electronic or print medias. They always try to incorporate or blend materials or themes which may catch the attention of the public as soon as the advertisement is displayed on certain channels or medias. When advertisers think about an eye catching theme, most of the times, they will give preferences to sex related themes. Sex is associated with many of the current advertisements in different ways. Most of the beauty products currently available in the market are backed with advertisements which contain sexual themes. In most of the cases, advertisers exploit the female body, its shape, appearance and looks for exploiting the feelings of consumers. Advertisers know very well that sex is an unavoidable feeling of all the people irrespective of the differences in gender, age or culture. Even though advertisers have tasted lot of success in promoting their products and services with the help of ads with sexual contents, some of the recent studies have shown that it is adversely affecting society’s perception of beauty. In most of the sex provoking ads, sex is portrayed vulgarly and the influence of such vulgar advertisements affects the beauty consciousness of the people very much. This paper analyses how sex in advertising has negatively affected society’s perception of beauty. In most of the current advanced societies, children spend more times in front of televisions and computers rather than in play grounds. “Research has shown that young children—younger than 8 years—are cognitively and psychologically defenseless against advertising. They do not understand the notion of intent to sell and frequently accept advertising claims at face value”(Children, Adolescents, and Advertising). Children during their early developmental stages may not possess the ability to segregate between good and evil. Moreover, children also possess intrinsic thirst for sexual activities even though it may not be visible or identifiable to others. When a sex provoking advertisement is displayed in front of the children, they are getting a new knowledge or a wrong message which they will keep in their mind forever. For example, bedroom scenes are common in the advertisements of condoms and beauty products. These advertisements often portray males as the symbol of strength or stamina and females as the symbol of beauty or figure. Children watching these advertisements may develop a feeling that only stronger men and beautiful women are capable of enjoying sexual life. In their 2002 thesis, “Effects of Sex in the Media,” scholars Richard J. Harris and Christina L. Scott address the effect of visual cultures whose morals are affected by this advertising. They say a worldview that progressively reflects the perception of the media may be refined by repeated contact to a regular set of messages. As an example, they say “watching numerous sitcoms and movies showing teenagers being sexually active may cultivate acceptance of such a position in the viewer and thus weaken family- taught values against pre-marital sex.” So, the viewing of sexual images in advertising also distorts the moral values of teenagers, maybe even to the point of rebellion against the values their family taught them (Robertson, p.2) “Sex is used in commercials to sell everything from beer to shampoo to cars. New research is showing that teenagers' exposure to sexual content in the media may be responsible for earlier onset of sexual intercourse or other sexual activities” (Children, Adolescents, and Advertising). Unwanted or unintended pregnancies are growing across the world because of the growing sexual activities among teenagers. Over exposure of sexual materials through internet, television and print media motivate teenagers to engage in sexual activities even before their marriages. Adolescence is a period during which sex hormones are hyperactive. It is difficult for teenagers to resist their temptation for sexual activities during this period. Sex oriented advertisements increases the desire for sexual activities further among teenagers. Because of the over exposure of sex oriented advertisements, most of the teenagers consider sexual intercourse before marriage as a right thing rather than a sin. Religious beliefs and consciousness about the necessities of keeping certain ethics in life are diminishing among teenagers as result of the influence of the sex provoking advertisements. Pre-marital pregnancies are a big social problem in most of the countries and sex oriented advertisements cannot stay away from the responsibilities of creating such big a problem in the current societies. Robertson (n.d) has mentioned the image problems created among women s after viewing the media advertisements; The May 2006 Nutrition Research Newsletter claims the, “media often portrays an unrealistic view of the ‘ideal’ female body that can cause women to be dissatisfied about the way they look…this thin model image can also be linked to an increasing prevalence in eating disorders among young women and girls.” (Robertson, p.2) There are many cases in which women develop psychological problems as a result of wrong messages sent by some of the advertisements about the beauty of female body. In most of the advertisements, slim figure of females are often portrayed as the symbol of beauty. In other words, such advertisements send the wrong message slim females are prettier or beautiful than fatty females. Thus, fatty females may try to reduce their weight as much as possible. For that purpose they may regulate or control their food habits beyond the limits and may face several physical problems later. Anorexia nervosa is a psychological problem or eating disorder which can develop as a result of the wrong portrayal of female body in advertisements. A person with anorexia often initially begins dieting to lose weight. Over time, the weight loss becomes a sign of mastery and control. The drive to become thinner is actually secondary to concerns about control and/or fears relating to one's body. The individual continues the ongoing cycle of restrictive eating, often accompanied by other behaviors such as excessive exercising or the overuse of diet pills to induce loss of appetite, and/or diuretics, laxatives, or enemas in order to reduce body weight, often to a point close to starvation in order to feel a sense of control over his or her body. This cycle becomes an obsession and, in this way, is similar to an addiction (Stoppler) From the above discussion, it is clear that misdirected sex elements in advertisements can cause psychological problems among females. Many people have the belief that men are bold and such wrong advertisements may not affect them very much. However, some of the recent researches have shown that men are equally vulnerable to the messages contained in advertisements. Current men are more beauty conscious than the men in past. In an article, “Eating Disorder: Men Have Body Image, written by Jill Neimark, a health specialist, mentioned about the adverse effects of sex provoking advertisements on men. In her opinion, “the cultural emphasis on a specific male type in advertising with sex appeal has caused a growing number of men to suffer from body image disorders, seeking ways to gain the toned body, many becoming compulsive exercisers or abusing steroids” (Robertson, p.2) Metrosexuality is a new term evolved recently which represents the beauty consciousness among men. Men with strong concerns about their appearance and lifestyles are usually referred as metrosexuals. Some of the recent researches have shown that the number of men who are going to beauty parlors and gyms have been increased a lot in the past two decades. This is because of the newly developed awareness that only stronger and prettier men will be able to catch the attention of beautiful girls. Liu et al (2006) have studied the differences in responses of males and females while responding to sex provoking ads. Their findings were given below. When comparing the male and female differences in the responses to the ads, it was found that males and females only differed significantly when they were exposed to the ad featuring a male model with the low level of sex appeal. No significant differences were found between male and female consumers regarding the other three ads featuring the male model with the high level of sex appeal or featuring the female model with the low or high level of sex appeal. Further analyses on male or female consumers’ responses to the four ads found that females had significantly different attitudes towards the ads, whereas males did not (Liu et al) Advertisements influence males and females in different manner. Generally speaking advertisements influence females more than males. However, the above trend seems to be changing rapidly at present. At present males are also attracted towards advertisements especially, sex provoking advertisements. In fact males interested in seeing the naked legs of females more than females who like to see the naked legs of males. That is the reason why advertisers expose the female body more than the male body while they produce advertisements. Perhaps the most eye-catching material in this world is female body. Apart from males, even females like to see better shaped figures of their female counterparts. For example, Hollywood celebrity Angeline Julie and Bollywood celebrity Aishwarya Rai (former miss world)are some of the hot celebrities of the current world. Beauty product manufactures often make use of their services to market their product successfully. (Aishwarya Rai And Abhishek Romance in Lux Ad Campaign) The above advertisement was one of the hot ads appeared on different mediums in which Aishwarya and her husband Abhishek try to promote Lux soaps. Aishwarya is one of the most popular female figures in the current world. Her beauty is exploited by different product manufacturers and Lux is one among them. In fact Aishwarya has lot of fans not only in India, but also in all over the world. Aishwarya fans may think that the secret behind her beauty is Lux products. In other words, Lux Company misleads the people using the ads similar to the ones displayed above. People may think that the secret behind beauty of renowned celebrities is Lux products. Such people will purchase Lux products anticipating that they can also become beautiful by using Lux products. Thus sex provoking ads are misleading the public in many ways. Sexual content in advertising is one of the major marketing strategies adopted by the product manufacturers especially the beauty product manufacturers. There is no other single entity in this world which can replace sex as far as popularity is concerned. “Sex is a get way to get attention. It rarely fails as an attention getter. It’s a sure bet and a great way of getting through the clutter of advertisements. It plays on the most coercive emotions of all” (Sexual Content of Advertisement). Genetically, all the living things can be easily attracted towards sex materials. Nature has created all its living things with a common denominator called sex. Around two three decades before, people approached sex with lot concerns. Religions attached a divine image to sexual activities and people were earlier reluctant in having sex external to their marital relationships. However, the life styles and life philosophies were changed a lot and along with that the beliefs and perceptions about sex were also changed. At present, many of the people consider sex as a biological and emotional necessity and they don’t bother much about the constraints imposed upon sex by religions. In other words, many of the current generation do not see any danger in extra marital sexual affairs. Moreover, in many societies people gave the idea of marriage and they adopted the idea of staying together. All these new developments and changing life styles were used wisely by the advertisers to market their product or services. In 2000, Heineken launched the "It's All About the Beer" campaign. One spot, called "The Premature Pour," shows a beautiful seductive woman pouring Heineken into a glass. When a guy across the bar responds by pouring his own, he nervously pours too fast and spills foam all over the table and himself. The sexual content is implicit, yet direct. The sexual reference in this and other spots in the campaign worked, causing sales to rise 13% in the first two quarters of 2002 (Levit) Beauty products manufacturer Dove recently conducted a global survey called “The Real Truth About Beauty: A World Report” to study the beauty consciousness of people. Their study has proved that the definition of beauty and the concepts of beauty were changed a lot over the past few decades. The results of this study or survey showed that “Just 12 % of women are very satisfied with their physical attractiveness Only 2 % of women describe themselves as beautiful 68 % strongly agree that the media sets an unrealistic standard of beauty 75 % wish the media did a better job in portraying the diversity of women's physical attractiveness, including size and shape, across all ages”(The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty) The above results showed that majority of the women in this world are not satisfied with their physical appearance or beauty. Moreover many of them believed that they were omitted from the beautiful lady list because of the wrong teachings of media about beauty and health. In other words, media often declares naturally beautiful people as ugly in order to safeguard the interests of the business groups. Only unsatisfied people will go after beauty products and media or product manufacturers wanted to cultivate a sense of ugliness in the minds of even beautiful people in order to sell their product or services. Based on the findings of their study, Dove implemented a beauty campaign to make the people aware of the changing beauty concepts. Dove declared that their intention was to make more people beautiful and to create a sense of self confidence in the minds of average or fair people that they can also attain a spot in the beautiful people’s list. They have implemented their beauty campaign with the help of extensive advertising campaigns. They utilized almost the entire advertisement medias to bring beauty in the main streams of discussion. Dove used women of various ages, shapes and sizes in their campaign in order to learn more about the perceptions of people about beauty. The results The campaign returned $3 for every $1 spent. Dove’s page on Unilever’s Web site says that the current campaign has been shown on over 25 major TV channels and in more than 800 articles in opinion leading newspapers as well as in popular women’s magazines. In the first six months of the campaign, sales of Dove’s firming products increased 700 percent in Europe and in the United States, sales for the products in the advertisements increased 600 percent in the first two months of the campaign. In 2004, the first year of the campaign, global sales surpassed $1 billion, exceeding company expectations. Dove’s public relations company built in news coverage for Asia with the Dove “models” appearing in 618 different newspaper clippings with a circulation of 139 million. By the end of 2005, sales in the Asian-Pacific market increased from 19 percent to 26 percent. In the United States, the campaign got free advertising space from media coverage on national television shows reaching 30 million daytime television viewers (The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty) The huge success experienced by Dove’s beauty campaign clearly shows that current generation is more beauty conscious than the older generation. Moreover, Dove’s campaign suggests that there are certain myths prevailing among the public about beauty. Current generation failed to realize the fact that all people have their own identity and they are beautiful in one way or other. Some people give more importance to facial appearance while rating the beauty of a person. However, no beauty products can change the facial appearance of a person. On the other hand some other people rate good figure or shape as the rating scale for beauty. It is possible to achieve good shape or figure using controlled diet and exercises. In other words, it is possible to achieve the figure of Aishwarya Rai; but it is impossible to get the facial beauty of Aishwarya Rai. Beauty product manufacturers are misleading or cheating the public in many ways. When sexual stimulus is used in advertising, viewers’ perceptual and processing resources are directed toward the sexual information in the ad rather than toward the brand. The use of explicit sexual messages in advertisements may interfere with consumers’ processing of message arguments and brand information, which in turn may reduce message comprehension. Furthermore, initial devices such as sexual stimuli overwhelm the message, and are negatively correlated to both recall and persuasion. Finally, there has been evidence to suggest that overt sexual appeals may have detrimental effects on attitudes toward the ad and brand, and therefore may reduce purchase intention. Hedonic appeals, such as sexual stimuli, increase motivation to process the ad execution, but largely at the expense of the brand. All of these threaten to act as potential hazards of using sex appeals (Is Sex Appeal Effective?, p.3-4) Many people are of the view that sex appeal will always help the advertisers in promoting their products and services. However the findings mentioned in the above paragraph clearly show that sex appeal may sometimes adversely affect the objectives of advertising. To conclude, Sex oriented advertisements are negatively affecting the society in many ways. The concept of beauty has been changed a lot as a result of the excessive sex provoking advertisements. Sex is perceived as the necessary element for making a person beautiful because of the above ads. Teenagers are often misdirected by the sex provoking advertisements and their life concepts and philosophies are getting changed as result of that. Unwanted pregnancies and teenage pregnancies are some of the social evils which are contributed by the sex provoking ads. While seeing a sex oriented advertisement, the attention of the people often gets directed towards the sexual content rather than the product or the services offered in the advertisement. Instead of building brand awareness, these advertisements may build sex awareness in the society. In short, sex provoking ads misleading the society in many ways. Works Cited 1. “Aishwarya Rai And Abhishek Romance in Lux Ad Campaign”.2010. Web. 14 June 2011. 2. “Children, Adolescents, and Advertising”. 2011. Pediatrics. Web. 14 June 2011. 3. “Is Sex Appeal Effective?”. Web. 14 June 2011. 4. Levit, Mark. “Sex in Advertising: Does it Sell?”. Web. 14 June 2011. 5. Liu Fang, Jianyao Li & Hong Cheng. "Sex appeal advertising: gender differences in Chinese consumers’ responses". 2006. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Vol. 18 Iss:1, pp.19 – 28. Web. 14 June 2011. 6. Robertson, Shawna. “Sex Appeal in Advertising has Negative Effects”. Web. 14 June 2011. 7. Stoppler, Melissa Conrad. “Anorexia Nervosa”. 2011. Web. 14 June 2011. http://www.medicinenet.com/anorexia_nervosa/article.htm 8. “Sexual Content of Advertisement”. 2008. Web. 14 June 2011. 9. “The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty”. 2009. Web. 14 June 2011. Read More