Advertising, Sex and Shifting Cultural Attitudes - Assignment Example

One of Jib Fowles’ “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals” is the “need for sex” (Behrens and Rosen, 2008). Sex appeal as an advertising tool has been popular over the last six decades. For example, the use of a blouse-less female next to a scantily dressed male clearly appeals to sexual drive. However, some advertisers are keen to use little sex appeal to prevent obliterating the intended information about a product. Sexual imagery produces better results on men than women do. For this reason, advertisers have found sex appeal to be tricky.

This essay puts into perspective the shift in cultural attitudes towards romance in recent times as a result of the use of sex appeal in advertising. Long time ago, the society demanded of us to repress our instincts even though this often resulted in psychic dissatisfaction. Over the last few decades, advertising and particularly using sex appeal has led to a massive shift of this attitude. Today, passions are advocated for to be freely indulged. Individuals have been led to believe that they are entitled to seek romantic and sexual zeal.

As a result, social ills such as divorce, unfaithfulness in marriages and polygamy are now considered legitimate solutions. In fact, the sexual sell in advertising effectively trashes sex, which should be respected as a human activity meant for reproduction rather than just a mere recreational exercise (Kelly, 2006). . The other concern that sex appeal advertising has bred over the years is that of people as objects. Additionally, recent advertising’s perspective of sex is nothing but pornographic which reduces sexuality to a stupid joke.

This is in itself a direct insult on any cultural values that uphold human dignity. Even more worrying is the fact that people have come to accept these demeaning images to the point of actualizing them. Besides, human beings being prone to accepting trends even when some are wrong have been trapped by this shift in cultural attitudes towards sex and romance (Stankiewicz and Rosselli, 2008). Some advertising images portray the woman consumer of a particular product as a superwoman. These images present a woman capable of performing all sorts of activities at home and at work assisted by the product being advertized.

This effectively renders the people around such as the husband, friends and children as just passive spectators. In connection to romance, this product gives the woman self-esteem and independence that no man can afford to offer. The created image therefore does not show real progress but an illusion, which ignores real social problems in marriages by exaggerating personal ones. Again, the creation of these sexual sell images as acceptable components in the society is the cause of loss of the once valuable ethos concerning human contact (Kelly, 2006).

The use of sex as an advertising tool has created artificial perspective of beauty where individuals strive to change their looks, especially women. This has resulted from the portrayal of women as sexual objects required master the art of objectifying their bodies (Stankiewicz and Rosselli, 2008). It is a common belief today that while men must not be that handsome to be accepted by women, men will usually expect women to be perfect and beautiful (Kelly, 2006). Women are encouraged to fight against aging in order to remain young, attractive, passive and dependent.

This is both offensive and exasperating to mature women. At the same time, to imply that little innocent girls are more attractive also threatens the wellbeing of real children. All these implications have the use of sex as a tool of advertising to thank. ReferencesBehrens, L., & Rosen, L. J. (2008).Writing and reading across the curriculum (12th Ed.). New York: Pearson Longman.Kelly, G. F. (2006). Sexuality today: the human perspective (8th Ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill.Stankiewicz, J. M., & Rosselli, F. (2008). Women as Sex Objects and Victims in Print Advertisements.

 Sex Roles, 58(7-8), 579-589.