Selling Sex As you flip through magazines, watch television or surf the internet you’ll see a countless number of products that have some sort of sexual imagery. Whether it is subtle or obvious, sex has been used to sell fashion, fragrances, accessories, alcohol, personal care products, and tobacco. These images are intended to entice people into purchasing the products they are advertising. Sexual advertising in subtle ways can help increase buyers but using sex to exploit men or women can be costly.
The fashion industry has had their share of provocative and shocking ads… pushing the envelope to see how far they can go and get away with it. Dolce and Gabbana, Tom Ford, Calvin Klein and Abercrombie and Fitch (just to name a few) have been involved in a few scandals. Their images include nudity, sexual behavior, physical attractiveness and homoeroticism, thus causing controversy. Fashion industries are not the only ones who have been caught in the fire.
There have been other big known companies, for example Burger King aired a commercial of Paris Hilton being sexually seductive while eating a burger and washing a Bentley. Parents found this commercial offensive and inappropriate to be aired on television but in the end this kind of controversy did generate consumer sales and public relations toward young men. Advertisements like these are targeting young men and women, college students, and teens. Fashion industries as well as other companies place great significance on physical attractiveness to sell their products.
Attractive models posing nude or half nude in designer clothes, drinking a name brand soda or using any kind of home product sexually can stimulate ideas, thoughts and feelings but on the other hand so can beauty without nudity and it sells just as well. Men like attractive women and women like attractive men, so it’s not necessary for companies to go out and advertise their products with nudity or be sexually suggestive in their ads. Just as long as the models have physical attractiveness based on sexual appeal the products can sell to the people they are targeting.
