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Use Of Sexual Imagery In Advertisements

Decent Essays

According to Twitchell (1996:157), “sex doesn’t sell, but it certainly captures attention”. Sheehan (2014) argue that sexual imagery has a stronger persuasive ability for men than for women, which might be because men have a different set of criteria for selecting a mate than women do. Men traditionally tend to recognise that a woman who is young, healthy and beautiful will be a good mate. Thus a lot of advertisers use sexual imagery to get a man’s attention. For women, the persuasive power of sexual imagery works differently. Sure many women will be attracted to a healthy, fit male model, but they also pay attention to the …show more content…

For instance, the 2002 Gatorade Commercial (Swove2204, 2015), shows women as equals to men as they appear in their sports kit, playing sport, in this case football, basketball and boxing and girls skipping with a rope. What it is important to note is that the ad even shows a woman boxer sweating which goes against several “rules” of women’s portrayal in adverts, as usually women are supposed to look flawless, feminine and perfect. Moreover, not all the women are skinny and have a perfect body and as in many adverts they are not all white, which also goes for men. Adverts do not spare women of different “colour”, the ideal woman as Kilbourne in killing us softly (2010) argued is acceptable only if she is white, thin, light skinned, young and perfectly groomed. Women of colour are considered beautiful only if they approximate the “white ideal”, in other words if they are light skinned and have straight hair. Another good example is an advert from USA Pro Fitness (2014), which shows women in action, in other words engaged in a

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