Figured I would make an attempt to keep the blog alive...-
One of the main things that I hear in my day to day life as far as complaints from women (and some men), is how people (women especially), are being portrayed as nothing more then sex objects in a variety of media - tv,books,radio ect... An argument against this blatant labeling would be that it helps to persuade young mens minds to look at women as toys, useless for nothing but sex. And in doing so ignoring the important aspects, i.e. personality ect... While this argument holds some merit to be sure, to me it really just does not make a whole ton of sense when one looks at the big picture.
Men (and to some extent women) are, by nature, programmed to look at eachother as sex objects first and foremost. In doing so they right away can differentiate between healthy potential mates and not-so healthy potential mates. When a young fertile man sees a women for the first time, I hate to break it to you ladies but the first thing we think is not "Oh wow....I bet she has a great personality". All we have to go on is basic primal attractiveness linked to a variety of key attributes(with some outlyers for all you fetish people out there). Mainly hip-waist ratio, bust size, and other factors that promote in our minds the feeling that that women can handle the stress of childbirth and motherhood. Back to how this relates to the media. Yes I admit the media may play a role in REINFORCING these natural instincts, but mainly in my opinion the males of different species all across the globe are SUPPOSED to look at women as sex objects first and foremost, to not do so would in all likelihood lead to the sure downfall of a species. We are hardwired to do so, because when someone is fighting to live off the land against other predators/animals they don't have time to "get to know" potential mates, its a knee jerk YES or NO response to whether they're a viable option. (obviously some exceptions can apply in the present state of things i.e. not getting eaten by saber-tooth tigers and what not)
So i guess in my opinion its not wrong at all for the media to be portraying perfect bodies/sex left and right to us, as when you really ask yourself what you want to see, everyone would rank this as high up because it applies to everyone. Everyone has a sex drive, everyone has the desire to have sex, so it would be bad marketing not to abuse this commonality between all human beings.
While Im not going to say much about the whole unrealistic expectations dilemma that is placed upon people I will mention a couple thoughts on the matter. People who I (and the majority of people i know) consider attractive are for lack of a better word HEALTHY (nobody that I know of actually thinks stick-thin models are attractive). These models or athletes or actors that we fret about are so adored because they are healthy. Majority of them are in extremely good shape, eat extremely well, and do not partake in a lot of extremely detrimental habits that a lot of us "normal people" partake in. Is this such a bad thing to be forcing into peoples subconscious? That they should strive to be healthy? To me the answer is simple, of course not. We SHOULD all strive to have a 6 pack, a low amount of body fat, and get all the nutrients we need. Issues arrive when people do not have the knowledge that would lead to a natural way of getting into shape i.e. eating disorders and so on.
Yea...so anyways i guess some questions people can answer if they feel so inclined:
1.Should (in your opinion) companies be allowed to use blatantly sexual adds to garner attention and sell products?
2.What are the pros/cons to us being exposed to sex day in day out in the media?
3.What are some ways to solve this body image crisis issue that we seem to be dealing with especially in America?
4.Is the media partially to blame for lots of the sexually related criminal acts that are committed every year?
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-whoa that was pretty intesne.
ReplyDeleteTo answer question one...I would have to honestly say that yes, I think companies should be allowed to use sexual adds to get people's attention. Why not? It sure seems to work, whether you find it offensive or if you happen to like the add, you always remember it and that is, in most cases, what the companies are going for.Also, in most cases, they probably wouldn't allow the adds to air if they were that provacitive or offensive.
-I think that an obvious con of being exposed to sex every second of the day from various media sources is that many kids feel the need to act on more sexual impulses and may not go about it the right away, for example not wearing protection, sleeping with many partners, and collecting/spreading diseases.So then I guess a pro could also work in the opposite way, as in children could be informed about sexual diseases and protection at a younger age.
As for the third question, I am not exactly sure how to answer this. I suppose the only answer I can think of is to inform teens that the pictures of models and celebrities in magazines and movies are not always the real thing, in fact most of the time they arent. They are all air brushed and digitally fixed to make them appear perfect.
For question four, I do think that the media probably has some what of an impact and could easily be related to some of the sexually related criminal acts in today's world. The media is huge and has a strong hold on many people, obviously it is not the reason for all sexual crimes, it depends on the person and their mind set, but they could use what they see in the media as an excuse.
For question one i agree. Companies should be able to use sexual advertisements. I think there should be a degree to what level of "sexy" or "sexual" that they get into but they should be able to. At this point I don't think there is any way around it either. Sexual ads have been around for quite a while why would people just stop now when it seems to have been successful????
ReplyDeleteFor question 1: I think that only companies focused on developing a healthier life style for Americans should be able to use such (sexual) ads.(ex)Vitiamins or work out equiptment to show what their product along with other healthy life style choices can do. Although I believe that we will never see that day because the world of advertisement is about creativity and it has almost no limits and governing the many ways of media would be almost impossible.
ReplyDelete1) I think that companies have discovered that sex does sell and in that case the real bottom line is money, not sex. The biggest problem is that it so over done. Children and teens get saturated with it and it not only affects their body image, but their perception of themselves. I have grown up watching the perfect faces, skin and bodies on TV and in movies and I have realized that I assume that women need to look like that in order to attract a man.
ReplyDelete2) The cons are that it is constantly over stimulating people. If a person really thinks about it we are led to believe that people have sexual encounters daily or several times a day. Then when compared to reality almost anyone would feel as if their life was missing a lot of these things, since in reality people really don't have sex that often. I am sure there are some who do, but most people don't plan their entire lives around sex. It also causes young teens to start thinking about sex before they need to. The pros are that it means we live in a society that is free and open enough to show the human body, except that most of the time it is marketing to sell a product.
3) They need to stop portraying everyone as perfect and advertising with the ultra thin models. There does seem to be some progress since they started using more models that are less thin and some high fashion models have started to protest against the use of the ultra thin models because of the health issue. Who want to see people who look like skeletons walking down a runway?
4) Society is to blame for these things and the media feeds right into it and promotes the sexual behavior that can turn into violence. There are wrong attitudes against women and other groups that have been in our society and the media seems to expand those attitudes that can cause people to act out criminally.
1. Should (in your opinion) companies be allowed to use blatantly sexual adds to garner attention and sell products?
ReplyDeleteTo answer question one I believe that companies should have the right to use these types of adds. When I think about what things I see advertised I think about the ones that really caught my attention. Those ones happen to be the ones with women being portrayed as sex symbols. I can't help it, it is instinct. But I think that men are more likely to remember advertisements when women are portrayed this way.
4. Is the media partially to blame for lots of the sexually related criminal acts that are committed every year?
Obviously the media affects what happens but that is not until after these crimes are committed. These people that do these crimes are hungry for some attention from the media. Criminals feed off of these types of things, so i guess what I am trying to say is that media plays a huge role in how sex is percieved to different people.
1. Yes companies should be allowed to use sexual ads to grab people’s attention. Sex sells is what I have heard my entire life about advertisement. Also growing up I have been told by my parents that not everything you see is the real deal, that there are alterations done to the image (airbrushing, or taking different body parts from other people and putting it on a model). So its every individuals own responsibility to justify what you think and believe in while seeing sexual adds.
ReplyDelete3.I would say our society in America is handling the body image crisis well, an example is having plus size models. Also more stores are allowing larger clothing sizes. Whether Americans like it or not they have to adjust and solve the body image crisis because many Americans are becoming obese, has that really affected society to some extent I guess you could say, it’s not like those people that are obese trying to look like a super model.
1. Yes companies should be allowed to use sexual ads to grab people’s attention. Sex sells is what I have heard my entire life about advertisement. Also growing up I have been told by my parents that not everything you see is the real deal, that there are alterations done to the image (airbrushing, or taking different body parts from other people and putting it on a model). So its every individuals own responsibility to justify what you think and believe in while seeing sexual adds.
ReplyDelete3. I would say our society in America is handling the body image crisis well, an example is having plus size models. Also more stores are allowing larger clothing sizes. Whether Americans like it or not they have to adjust and solve the body image crisis because many Americans are becoming obese, has that really affected society to some extent I guess you could say, it’s not like those people that are obese trying to look like a super model.
i think that no matter what people will use sex to sell things and i think that people who say that it isnt good for there children to see can only teach there children there views and use them as example and talk about it with there children. parents need to be more open on there thoughts about sexual issues anyways so it could be used as an exuse to bring up sexual topics!
ReplyDelete1. Should (in your opinion) companies be allowed to use blatantly sexual adds to garner attention and sell products? I think so, and I think the point that was made in the original post that people see these advertisements and want to be like these people, which promotes being healthy is a good thing. However, I think this becomes a problem when people use unhealthy ways to achieve their goal of looking fit.
ReplyDelete4. Is the media partially to blame for lots of the sexually related criminal acts that are committed every year? I don’t think so. I think it would be unfair to blame the media for the actions of criminals.