This is becoming my pet peeve
I was accosted again today by an image of a bare chested, muscular man obviously being used to attract female attention.
I grew up in a time when advertisers used the scantily clad female form to sell products. The message in the medium was that women were useless for anything other than sex. Then along came the Feminist Movement. Using sex to sell did not die out, but it did become less prevalent or perhaps only less obvious.
“In 1973 the book Subliminal Seduction claimed that subliminal techniques were in wide use in advertising. The book contributed to a general climate of fear with regard to Orwellian dangers (of subliminal messaging). Public concern was enough to lead the Federal Communications Commission to hold hearings and to declare subliminal advertising "contrary to the public interest" because it involved "intentional deception" of the public.” (Subliminal Advertising, Psychologist World website, from a posting in Influence and Personality Psychology)
The web site, mental_flos, contains an article that identifies a number of recent subliminal messages in advertising and beyond. http://mentalfloss.com/article/67223/7-sneaky-subliminal-messages-hidden-ads (the following image is from that article).
You have to ask who this advertisement is directed towards. The product is clearly a woman’s shampoo, so how does a naked woman entice another woman to purchase the product? On closer inspection you may notice that the forearm is more muscular than the rest of the body. Once this is pointed out, the image takes on a completely different tone. The sexual nature becomes obvious.
In October of 1970, The Female Eunuch, by Germaine Greer was published. The main thesis of the book dealt with the sexual repression of women through the “traditional” suburban, consumerist, nuclear family which devitalized them and rendered them eunuchs.(The Female Eunuch. (2016, January 11). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:39, January 11, 2016, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Female_Eunuch&oldid=699215740)
I will readily admit that women around the world have not achieved equality with men, but I also believe that many North American women no longer suffer from sexual repression. This type of image and many more like it, found in abundance on covers of novels about Scotsmen, cowboys, and vampires, to mention a few, suggest a problem to me. Why are these women searching for sexual excitement with fictional partners, between the covers of novels, instead of with real life partners beneath their own covers? And with which gender does the problem lie?
I grew up in a time when advertisers used the scantily clad female form to sell products. The message in the medium was that women were useless for anything other than sex. Then along came the Feminist Movement. Using sex to sell did not die out, but it did become less prevalent or perhaps only less obvious.
“In 1973 the book Subliminal Seduction claimed that subliminal techniques were in wide use in advertising. The book contributed to a general climate of fear with regard to Orwellian dangers (of subliminal messaging). Public concern was enough to lead the Federal Communications Commission to hold hearings and to declare subliminal advertising "contrary to the public interest" because it involved "intentional deception" of the public.” (Subliminal Advertising, Psychologist World website, from a posting in Influence and Personality Psychology)
The web site, mental_flos, contains an article that identifies a number of recent subliminal messages in advertising and beyond. http://mentalfloss.com/article/67223/7-sneaky-subliminal-messages-hidden-ads (the following image is from that article).
You have to ask who this advertisement is directed towards. The product is clearly a woman’s shampoo, so how does a naked woman entice another woman to purchase the product? On closer inspection you may notice that the forearm is more muscular than the rest of the body. Once this is pointed out, the image takes on a completely different tone. The sexual nature becomes obvious.
In October of 1970, The Female Eunuch, by Germaine Greer was published. The main thesis of the book dealt with the sexual repression of women through the “traditional” suburban, consumerist, nuclear family which devitalized them and rendered them eunuchs.(The Female Eunuch. (2016, January 11). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:39, January 11, 2016, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Female_Eunuch&oldid=699215740)
I will readily admit that women around the world have not achieved equality with men, but I also believe that many North American women no longer suffer from sexual repression. This type of image and many more like it, found in abundance on covers of novels about Scotsmen, cowboys, and vampires, to mention a few, suggest a problem to me. Why are these women searching for sexual excitement with fictional partners, between the covers of novels, instead of with real life partners beneath their own covers? And with which gender does the problem lie?
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