Sex Must Sell With Skyy...

Skyy Vodka has numerous more highly sexual based advertisements besides the ones featured here. How do these pictures make you feel while viewing them? What does it say to you about their product? Is the product making false claims? Do you believe these advertisements are directed at men, women, or both.

Remember, there are no right answers to any of these questions. They are for discussion purposes.

Thanks Relate Mag!

Relate Magazine of St. Louis has allowed us to submit a few articles to them from our project this semester. They have published some of our content for us to help us reach a larger audience. Thanks Relate Mag staff for all of your help with our media literacy project!

Check out their website, here are a few of our articles:

http://www.relatemag.com/2009/12/i’m-a-barbie-girl/

http://www.relatemag.com/2009/12/the-trend-continues-sexual-portrayal-of-women-in-advertising/

http://www.relatemag.com/entertainment/

Sexual Power

Heidi Klum, as a spokesperson for Jordache Jeans, has demonstrated power for women in Jordache’s advertisements. Unfortunately, this power is a sexualized power, which is hardly empowering. In both of these ads, Klum poses topless with her blonde hair draped over her breasts, tightly gripping a whip in her fashionable jeans. We see her sultry eyes, her tussled hair, and her gorgeous figure standing over a city and this tells a woman that’s all you need. Women can rule the world with a hot body and a whip, not intelligence, not a giving heart, not hard work.





Is this dominatrix kind of woman one women desire to be? One women want men to see them as? Is this the kind of power we have at home? In our workplaces? At school? After all the years of lobbying for women’s rights, is this really the only power women have gained?

Sexual Objects for a Good Cause?

For years, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has had the advertisement campaign “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” featuring models and celebrities baring it all for the proper treatment of animals. Does using women as sexual objects for a good cause make it okay? Who is PETA trying to direct these advertisements at and do you believe it’s effective? Should PETA change anything about this advertisement campaign?



Other things to think about while viewing PETA’s advertisements featuring nude women: Does this change your opinion on PETA or the celebrity in subject? Is there another way to get their point across than featuring women naked? Why do you think PETA decided to take this approach?

Ellen on Aging

An obsession with the process of aging is becoming more and more prevalent in America. We have twenty year olds starting to use anti-wrinkle cream in order to start early in preventing their skin from showing signs of age. Middle aged and older women are getting plastic surgery, microderm abrasion, and Botox to try and look as young as possible. Ellen’s opening statement in her Cover Girl Simply Ageless commercial “Inner beauty is important, but not nearly as important as outer beauty” has become an anthem for American women. We associate getting older with being less beautiful, even having less value and advertisements like this reinforce that mentality.

Ultimately, our makeup and anti-aging preferences aren’t going to keep us young, make us who we are, define our relationships, change a life, or make us truly happy. So, why do we stress so much about our age, our wrinkles, our makeup, and clothes? Outer beauty may make us feel more comfortable and confident, but it’s fleeting. Inner beauty is what is more important; it’s things like being a friend, loving your family, enjoying your surroundings, sharing knowledge, and looking back on memories.

Maybe we should spend less time scrutinizing ourselves for the way our faces and body change as we age, and look at it as how much we have experienced and loved our lives. How would our lives be impacted if we saw fewer media telling us how much we need to change who we already are? What do you think advertiser’s motives are in telling us things like this? Do you think they might be effected by it too?

Is This Empowering Women?

Playtex has different advertisements currently being broadcasted where average women are being displayed in little clothing and a Playtex bra. In your opinion, is this empowering to you to see normal sized women talking about their different sizes and shapes of their breast? Is it still making women appear as sexual objects? Would the campaign be perceived differently if all the women had fit bodies? Do you think that Playtex has changed the ideal of what is beautiful and acceptable by having normal sized women in their ads?

Uniquely Beautiful

Women and girls of all ages have immense pressure to conform and be the perfect ideal of beauty. Is there anything wrong with being uniquely beautiful? The media forces these ideals of perfection onto society that results in celebrities transforming their image and in turn pushing that belief towards their fans.



Some questions to think about: How does it make you feel that women and girls can’t feel comfortable in their own skin because they aren’t prefect in the media’s eyes? Why do women and girls feel they have to look like everyone else? Why is being perfect such necessity?

Rape Culture

Dolce & Gabbana and Calvin Klein have created advertisements that they feel satisfy some sort of “female fantasy”. To sell their jeans, Calvin Klein has half dressed three young men and may as well not have dressed the one frail female in the photo. The three men have obviously participated in an orgy with the woman. One guy is so tired he has passed out on the floor. On top of a new guy, she is nearing exhaustion as she tries to satisfy the man sitting on the couch as well as the one she’s on top of. Dolce & Gabbana places the seductive woman on the ground, hips thrusted, and being held down by a half naked man. Also in their photo is four other men modeling clothes while watching, perhaps waiting for their turn with the woman.

What is interesting about these advertisements is that the women seem to be enjoying all of this attention, these men, and the forceful sexual acts. They are posed as if they want all of the sex, that they like being dominated by these men.

Is this a real fantasy for women? Maybe for some, but I would say it is more of a problem than a realistic portrayal. Sure, every girl desires attention, love, affection from someone…and if he’s cute that doesn’t hurt either. However, I am not so sure how many women would truly sexually welcome five men at a time. Sexual acts that are unwelcome are considered rape, and I believe these ads are contributing to the rape occurrences in our culture. When we see these ads, men may think women desire this, and women may feel they don’t have the power to fight in a rape or say no when being pressured.

What values, lifestyles, and points of view are being represented or omitted from these advertisements? What is this saying to you personally? Do you think images like this may be contributing to acts of violence against women?

What is this Advertising?

We put together a brief clip of print advertisements for an array of products: body wash, toothpaste, shoes, food, even suits for men. Notice the pattern of advertisers sexually portraying women and either displaying a tiny brand/logo or none at all. In many cases, such as with the Adidas shoe and Duncan Quinn advertisements, we would have no idea what the ad was for if we weren't familiar with the brand beforehand.

Why do advertisers hide their logos? What techniques are used to attract our attention in ads like these? Is there a problem with this?

Advertisement or Soft Core Porn?

American Apparel’s recent ad campaign is no different than many of previous years campaigns. Women and maybe even girls are being showed partially clothed in provocative and highly sexual positions. I have posted a few examples of these ads, but some were too explicit to post on our blog. The ones I felt too explicit included full nudity and/or display of private parts that I felt didn’t need to be shown to get our point across.



I ask you to answer the following questions when looking at these examples: What do you think American Apparel is trying to say through these ads? Who do you think their intended audience is? How and what do you think the intended audience feels?

I'm a Barbie Girl

Barbie has teamed up with MAC to sell a line of makeup products and Barbie to girls and young women. Commercials and advertisements continually portray young girls acting, even looking like Barbie herself. Girls are told that if they want to be pretty, they have to look like Barbie and have her stuff too. Several researchers have conducted studies on Barbie concerning her body. Some suggest that if Barbie were a real woman her waist size would be 39% smaller than the average waist size of an anorexic patient. As if that wasn’t issue enough, I had to look twice at these MAC advertisements to see if these women pictured were real or fake. They are most definitely real models, although their hair, makeup, even their poses seem plastic.

Why do you think that Barbie and MAC chose this photo for their advertisement? Do real women really want their makeup to look like this? What are they trying to tell us?

Is Your View of Beauty Distorted?

Dove’s Evolution advertisement is a realistic demonstration of what extremes models must go through in order to be shown in a variety of mass media, including advertisements. Women are being transformed by not only make-up artists and hairdressers, but also with the technology of digitally enhancing the beauty of these women. Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty has been accepted immensely worldwide, with several print advertisements and commercials being released following this Internet-based viral marketing campaign.



Dove’s Onslaught advertisement focuses on the effect the beauty industry has on young girls growing up in a world of hyper-sexuality and the notion that sex sells with women being sexual objects. Is Dove on the cutting edge of leading a revolution for women and girls? By Dove exposing the public to the extremes women go through to achieve this idea of perfection, are they empowering women to accept themselves and for others to accept women for their inner beauty more so than their outward appearance?



Has Dove’s Campiagn for Real Beauty finally gotten the media away from the fad of showing women in perfection in advertisements? Probably not, but stars like Kim Kardashian and Kelly Clarkson have recently expressed disgust towards media outlets that have digitally enhanced their appearance. Are controversies like these helping women of all shapes, sizes, colors, and body types begin to accept themselves and their bodies?

Selling Clothes...Without Clothes

Men’s clothing and accessories designer, Tom Ford, is known for his explicit print advertisements featuring nude women, and occasionally nude men as well. While the ads may not completely show the entire private areas of the women depicted, they leave nothing to the imagination and are highly inappropriate. One ad above places an attractive man beer in one hand, cigar in the other, fully clothed in a Tom Ford suit. This image may not be as offensive had they not placed a nude female model wearing nothing but presumably a Tom Ford bracelet and sunglasses. Also, did you notice that the man is completely ignoring the woman standing next to him? The other ad above also for Tom Ford’s sunglass line is obviously a sexual innuendo. While this ad does show the face of the female, it illustrates her solely as an object for man’s pleasure.

Tom Ford has several other ads similar, even more explicit than these. Please be warned the content of these images are very sexual and are not condoned by our group.

How do you feel when you see ads like these? How do you think the women posed in these ads feel?

Has Reebok EasyTone advertisements taken it too far?

Reebok has recently introduced a series of advertisements displaying women as objects being categorized based on their physical being. The scantly clad women displayed in the ads bear no personality and are simply used to sell the product. In the commercial displayed in this post, the actress never makes contact with the product, but viewers see plenty of her physical attributes. Has Reebok taken the idea of “sex sells” to an alarming level?

Thinness & Beauty

While many often say that as a society, we as Americans are growing increasingly larger, our media demonstrates something entirely different. Men and women alike are shown images of pop stars, actresses, models, talk show hosts, and countless other celebrities which set the beauty standard for the general public. When we see a glowing Drew Barrymore with her "New Body" in love on the beach, a Fitness magazine telling us how to "Banish Cellulite" when the model likely didn't have an issue with cellulite to begin with, or an image of Heidi Klum captioned, "Too Fat To Model" we clearly see the standard for American beauty is becoming thinner and thinner. We see that thinness not only means beauty, but in many cases love, acceptance, power, and success for women.

The pervasiveness of these images has caused several body image issues in girls and women including eating disorders, over exercising, low self-esteem, and a distorted viewing of themselves. The average woman, including celebrities, battle these body image issues on a daily basis, even harming themselves physically and emotionally because of the pressure to be the "beautiful" they see in advertisements, magazines, television, and so on.

Do you think the media offers us an accurate portrayal of women's bodies? Why do you think we strive for an impossibly perfect body? Why do we care so much about what other people think?

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