sex sells. but takes a greater toll

Sex appeal in advertising has been known to be an extremely effective strategy to attract attention to your brand by using very attractive woman to flaunt their product, By sexually objectifying parts of the body and construing an idea that this product will bring you these beautiful woman or the bringing of power with this product. sex appeal alone can be the attention-getter in an ad. This type of advertising can cause some problems. 1, is that this is false advertising. and 2, this sets unreachable standards for woman that can take a great emotional and structural toll for woman.

Today we see a high amount of provocative and sexualized images in the advertisements we come across and view everyday.  The models that we see in the advertisements are always beautiful with great skin, perfect make up and very thin.  The ads always show the women in a sexual manner,     she will be positioned in a very sexual way, for instance with her legs open or she will have the male gaze. Her face and body language will look seductive; she’s ready to be viewed by a man. These kinds of advertisements are affecting women self-esteem today. Many women look at these ads and they feel they are not up to their standards. Some women do not feel beautiful enough.  The women in the ads are beautiful, but many of the images are altered to make them look perfect. Therefore making this type of perfection unrealistic. Advertising campaigns use a common technique called airbrushing, where computers digitally alter the images to look cleaner and sharper.  

How advertising affects women’s self esteem is a rising issue that seems to get worse every year. The models in advertising have a negative effect on women, but the ones who are affected the most are young teenage girls.  They see the images of very thin models, for instance in the Victoria’s Secret catalog and they want to look just like them.  This causes eating disorders, such as bulimia and anorexia.  They are two of the leading eating disorders upon women.Anorexia is very common among young girls between the ages 15-19 years old.  This is when the person does not eat in order to be very thin, they look abnormally thin, but they still believe they have not reached their goal and continue to get thinner.  Bulimia is when a person lacks control of their eating and they over eat. They eat excessively, but they cause themselves to vomit what they ate. I think that the amount of sexualized content on tv and in ads should be reduced. advertisers need to be more realistic in their ads so the girls who grow up to see them wont be emotional wrecks later on in life.  

Midriffs

 Exploitation of the midriff has been a super strategy for most of styling commercials we see on television. The Midriff is the section of body between just below the breast and right above the pubic area. This section of body to normal Americans can be sexually stimulating to see. Most Americans are exposed to sexually explicit images and videos and young age, typically early teens 10-13. Sex is thrown around a lot on television shows and commercials now a days and it seems to be slowly being burned into our heads that being sexual and sexually attractive will bring power and acceptance. I came across a beer commercial that seemed to be a perfect example for this topic.

In this commercial we can see an extreme exploitation of the midriff along with chest and legs. this is a good example of what most American men find exceptionally suitable and attractive. she walks in the bar filled with men and instantly all eyes on her. she is given a beer but decides to open it her own way under her bra. all the men drop their jaws as she begins to down the beer. She pulled a very clever act that she obviously wanted to show. This is also a normal style in most commercials now a days. so what came first? Is this what we wanted to see all along or is this what we have been accustomed to. More importantly is this the kind of empowerment women are really trying to receive and work for? I think that the corruption in exploitation of womens body's for for extremal sales ans revenue in horrible. this also sets standards for common women that they need to extremely attractive. The sad part is that to reach this goal of being perfect will cost an extreme amount of money.