Essay on Consumerism in a Sexual Economy

In an essay written by Jim Fowles, “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals” he says advertising manipulates individuals to buy things they do not need. Advertisements use many emotional appeals such is the need for sex, escape, aesthetic sensation, satisfy curiosity and guidance. Today, Calvin Klein advertisements captures majority of individual’s attention. It is a well-known brand and expensive. It is known for their jeans and underwear. Calvin Klein apparel, underwear, shoes, and accessories can be found and brought online stores, malls, and outlet malls. Many famous celebrities and musician artists posed for Calvin Klein’s advertisement campaigns, wearing Calvin Klein jeans, shirts, sweaters, jackets, bras, purses, and underwear. Calvin Klein

In today’s society, no matter where you are, there is always a good chance that you have seen an advertisement. These little creatures are everywhere. You may see them when you are reading a magazine, watching TV, or surfing the internet. We have become so used to them. Advertisements are good at making us stop what we are doing and giving them our full attention. What is an advertisement? An advertisement is an announcement made to the public. In Jib Fowles’ article, “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals,” he is informing us that companies are spending millions of dollars on advertisements to grab our attention in order to manipulate us into spending or thinking of spending our hard-earned money on their product. Even though a lot of people do not want to believe that a paper that is eight times eleven with an image and no more than five words is manipulative because we want to think that we are not that easy to trick. Nike created an advertisement for one of

“There are over 250 billion advertisements released to the public every year with the average person seeing over 3000 ads every single day” (Kilbourne). This is an astronomical amount of information for anyone to process in a week let alone in one day. This is a prime example of Capitalism at it’s finest. Controlling the consumer in every aspect of their lives. Jean Kilbourne also talks about how “Only 8 percent of an advertisement is actually processed by the conscious mind, with the other 92 percent being soaked up by the subconscious” (Kilbourne). Thinking about those numbers really brings into perspective how much we are truly influenced by media

Like the Calvin Klein ad, we are living in a society that exposes the human body to reel in the big bucks. He further pushes this fact by stating, “As ever, sex sells” (para 3). This is an important note, because we see ads, such as the above, every day. Even though this is not a new marketing strategy it is becoming more widely used, the more society buys in.

She does this by describing advertisements for different products. One example she uses is an ad for Possession clothing. She describes the ad by saying “Sometimes it’s ‘all in good fun’ as in the ad for Possession shirts and shorts featuring a man ripping off the clothes off a woman who seems to be having a good time” (492-93). This is an example of how most men in society see women as their property and how they can do whatever they want to them whenever they want. As well as describing the ad for the Possession clothing line, Kilbourne uses an example of a Pepsi commercial featuring Cindy Crawford. The commercial is of Crawford getting out of her car to go buy a Pepsi while being checked out by two young boys (502-03). This is showing how even from a young age, boys are taught that it is okay to view a woman as something that can just be stared at and thought about in ways that are nothing but sexual and objectifying. Kilbourne also makes a point to explain how if the roles were reversed in some advertisements nothing would change. She does this by using an ad for jeans. The ad shows a little boy lifting up a woman’s skirt and looking up it (507). She states “it may seem that I am reading too much into this ad, but imagine if the genders were reversed. We would fear for the little girl who is unzipping a man’s fly in an ad” (507-08). She does this to explain that no

According to the article, Why Sex Sells...More Than Ever, “Using sex to sell everything from alcohol to banking services has increased over the years: 15 percent of ads studied used sex as a selling point in 1983. That percentage grew to 27 percent in 2003,” (Why Sex Sells…). And we can assume percentages went nowhere but up from there. Having ads sell on sex appeal is not only happening in the United States of America, but all over the world as well. “In 2003, as with previous years, approximately 30% of all complaints to the Australian Advertising Standards Board related to portrayal of sex/sexuality/nudity and for the past four years this has been the most common issue prompting complaints,” (Beer, Boats, and

The average United States Citizen views about 5000 advertisements a day (Johnson). Advertising is everywhere. Billboards on the way to work, ads on the internet, and paper products such as magazines or newspapers display a sale or a promotion of a good or service. Usually, the ad will give a brand or company name, and uses the product’s merits to draw the consumer closer. This has grown exponentially as advertisements in media in 1970 were estimated to be 500 a day, a ten percent increase in the last 48 years. (Johnson). This is due to the rise of technology, as the computer has become a household gadget within the new millenium. These advertisements are meant to give a synopsis of the product or service’s purpose, quality, and efficiency. If a consumer views 5000 advertisements in a single day and assuming the commercials do not repeat, 5000 goods or services are introduced. With more options to choose from in such little time, the consumer has a harder time differentiating the quality and perhaps necessity of the product. The marketers rely on the quick, impulsive decision making of consumers. With the misleading nature of many infomercials or radio broadcasts, the people of American society are bombarded with constant propaganda, thus making seemingly harmless promotions more potent to filling industries’ pockets and lessening the common population’s

This ad is multidimensional in the way that it demeans women. The first layer is equating the women with inanimate objects. The women are being scaled down to the size of beer bottles as though they were barbie dolls, meant to be played with and molded by the hands of the viewer. The model lays with her legs spread and her chest pushed out in a hypersexualized submissive pose. She looks up at the viewer with a coy smile. Ads like these are meant to sell to an adult male audience. They are made by men with the intention of making money and the understanding that if you offer a typical American male the idea of sex with a physically attractive woman and equate that to a product, he will buy almost anything. This type of imagery also affects how women feel that they should act. Viewing images of women as sex objects in these submissive poses causes women to feel that they are only valuable if they fit the ideals put in place by the heterosexual male gaze.

An important controversial issue that America faces today is the debate of sex in advertising. Edward A. McCabe and John Carroll are two authors that present opposing arguments about this issue. McCabe persuades the reader into thinking that sex in advertising is no big deal, while Carroll explains why this is a major problem in America. Sex ads are defined as any type of advertising that shows pictures of partial nudity with wording that relates to the body in a sexual way, usually portraying women. Sex in advertising has been around for a long time but has the industry become too sexually explicit?

Over the last few decades, American culture has been forever changed by the huge amount of advertisement the people are subjected to. Advertising has become such an integral part of society, many people will choose whether or not they want to buy a product based only on their familiarity with it rather than the product’s price or effectiveness. Do to that fact, companies must provide the very best and most convincing advertisements as possible. Those companies have, in fact, done

The ad is in the colors of grey and white in what it looks to be an isolated bathroom or showers. The floors look dirty as if no one been there for a long time. In this ad there are three young adult women and three young adult men. It can be assumed by the ways these ladies and men were dressed it was summer. The ladies are dressed in white, one of them having a laced dress with a flower near the shoulder. The other lady is laying on the floor with a sleeveless blouse and along with mini skirt. The other lady is against the wall and is wearing very short pants and a blouse that is half see through. Two of the young men are only wearing white jeans without a shirt, the other man is wearing a white blazer over his shoulders, blue jeans and sneakers. Dolce & Gabbana are selling their summer clothes collection. At least that is what a person will expect just passing through the pages of a magazine. For another person that is looking at the subliminal message could find the ad as promoting violence against women.

Every day, companies present the people with advertisements everywhere they go. Advertisements have become very prevalent in today’s society nowadays focusing in on a negative connotation. Advertisement has become an effective way for producers to display their new products. In present day, they come in forms of billboards, flyers, e-mails, and even text messages. It is widely known that companies create advertisements to persuade people to buy specific products or goods; however, it is not widely known that advertisements can make a negative impact on today’s society. The companies manipulate people’s mind and emotions, swaying people by new promotions and therefore generating a strong desire to fit into the society, that causes them to make inessential expenditures. Advertisements pose a critical impact on the American culture.

Sex is everywhere you turn. Victoria’s Secret is notorious for their ads that plaster billboards and the sides of buildings, featuring scantily-clad women suggesting an obvious sexual air. The bags you receive at Abercrombie feature half-dressed models, often two of which may be kissing or touching one another. These sexual images are far too present in the every day lives of young children, much younger than what used to be acceptable. Aside from this moral questionability, ads such as these often contain images of unrealistic body types, which exploit insecurity to make consumers use their product, the result of which can be dangerous to mental and physical health. Finally, when I see ads like the one to the right, and rack my brain

Advertising is an important form of communication between products and customers. How to get viewers’ attention is first thing need to consider for advertising. Sexual appeal is become very useful tool in advertising, and it use is increasing. The sex appeal has a very long history, the first sex appeal advertising was introduced in 1911 by Woodbury’s Facial Soap (Campaign,2014). Once this advertising is released it has caused an enormous controversy, it is considered so risqué and inappropriate by several readers, even their cancelled their subscriptions to the magazine immediately (O’Barr,2011) . However, by today’s sexually liberated standards, this advertising already is positively chaste. During the next 93 years, sex is become a

     The appearance of these models is the primary concern of the ads and entails many different elements. Every model portrays a different characteristic through the pose they are in and the clothes that they wear. One ad depicts a sexy young woman who shows confidence by extending her arms out and exposing her flat stomach. Her hips are thrust to the left side, her long beautiful hair is gently blown back, and her facial expression and eye contact hint at sexual desire or acceptance of the viewer. Another female model also has her hips out to the left, but her hands express a different idea. While one hand is used to play with her hair, the other is up to her face with her pointer finger right below her bottom lip. Her hair partly covers her eyes and with her head slightly down, she comes off as shy but confidant. The confidence comes from her exposed stomach and direct eye contact that she makes with the viewer. These two women are somewhat opposite in how they come off which shows that Calvin Klein is trying to appeal to what different guys look for and appreciate in a woman.